This is in cooperation and coordination with the Joint Inspection Campaign Carried out by the two Ministries in various regions of the Kingdom
The Ministry of Commerce and Investment and the Ministry of Culture and Information carried out a joint inspection campaign on printing presses in all regions of the Kingdom. The campaign that lasted for 5 days, resulted in inspecting 783 printing presses, 45,850 printed items in violation seized, 45 violation notices were given to relevant printing presses and 5 violating ones were shut down in Riyadh city.
The joint inspection campaign aims at verifying the regular work of printing presses, and applying the rules and regulations against the irregular printing presses, besides eliminating any commercial fraud practices related to the quality of goods and products, as well as forging and counterfeiting the registered trademarks. This is to preserve the intellectual property rights in the Kingdom.
The joint inspection teams proceed to check and control any violations related to Anti-Commercial Fraud Law, the Trademark System, the Anti-Commercial Concealment Law and the Commercial Registration System.
The inspection teams of MCI and the Ministry of Information coordinated together during the implementation of the campaign by tracking the details of the printing presses involved in forging and counterfeiting the trademarks of the goods and products, then to be referred to the judicial authorities for taking the legal measures against them.
The violations of the printing presses included some cases of suspicious commercial concealment, practicing printing activity without a commercial registration, the CR is not matching the actual activity of the printing press, printing registered trademarks after making some falsifications, counterfeiting registered and famous trademarks without getting the approval from the owner.
It is worth mentioning that any violation related to Anti-Commercial Fraud Law or the trademark system may lead to penalties up to three years' imprisonment and fines of up to SR 1 million, in addition to defamation and deporting the labors from the Kingdom after the enforcement of the relevant sentence, besides the suspension of the trade activity. All that in accordance with the judicial verdict.
MCI calls on all consumers to lodge their complaints and observation through MCI Consumer Call Center (1900) or through the application of a Commercial Violation Report or via the Ministry's official website.