chinese counterfeitng

It's been a big problem for a while. Think about the airplane you are flying in--what if some part had been inadvertently installed from counterfeit sources? (I don't know that there have been any instances of crash/failure resulting from this but you can imagine some parts, perhaps those used in medical technology as well, can pose life or death issues). 

@tomic601 - I remembered it as a problem from some time ago when the US was attempting to negotiate trade agreements with the Far East to reduce counterfeiting-- it really gave me pause. Glad that the folks dealing with supply were screening.
As a lark, a colleague who did me a big favor on a set of NOS tubes recently sent me another set-- a pair of Mullard EF86s -- that were counterfeit, but apparently really well done, at least to the uninitiated. That’s one of the reasons I shy away from E-Bay as a source for vacuum tubes. I suspect in some cases, even the sellers aren’t aware that they are offering bogus goods.
Thanks for your post.

When I was a child lawyer (they have those, when you get out of law school you have to learn how to be a lawyer), i cut my teeth on ’knock off’ cases at the very beginning- ca 1981. One case involving I can’t remember what- typically they were licensed toy knock off cases-- had a US defendant who had commissioned the infringing work. His day book or diary was marked at a deposition and had a pithy aphorism on each page (as part of the publication of blank pages with dates). A critical page in his case had the maxim "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" at the top of the page. Life is strange.