
. The lawyers will certainly make some money here.
Regardless of what you think of FTDI's decision, it is the counterfeiters that are the criminals and it is the responsibility of the goods manufacturer to sell products containing authentic parts. As a manufacturer, if you cannot control your buyers then you should change how you operate. Some people on this topic appear to be sympathising with the manufacturer who has inserted the counterfeit product into a design. Perhaps a minority deserve sympathy but not the majority.
If a designer or budgeter within a company creates a cost list with the price of a component listed as it would be supplied from the grey (risky) market, and not a price from the chip manufacturer’s franchised dealer, and the company goes onto source that component from the grey market then does that company really deserve sympathy? No.
In small and medium quantities, it is not difficult for anyone to buy from a reputable dealer such as Farnell, Mouser or Digikey. In larger numbers, try the franchised dealers for best price. These are very simple supply rules. If part of your organisation decides to cut costs and take a risk with a cheaper deal then it must accept the risk (or incompetence) and prepare to get burnt.
As an individual (or business), when you buy cheap electronics from sources such as ebay, direct from China or from smaller online outlets you are running the risk of buying counterfeit, reject or stolen goods. When other, more reputable outlets exist for what you are buying, and you still choose to buy cheap then you must accept the risk. I have been buying from ebay for years for personal use and most 'sold-as-new' electronics products I have purchased for the lowest price have developed a fault after a while. Nearly all those products have clearly been factory rejects or substandard in some way. I have not whinged about this because I understand the risk. I try to avoid short-duration ebay dealers, those with a significant number of negative feedbacks and those who I consider to have an unreasonable returns policy, and I never buy mains goods unless I take them apart to check for safety first. I rarely buy from China but, when I do, I understand the risk. For my business, I adopt minimum risk and do not buy from China directly and do not buy from ebay unless it is a 'transparent' non-complex product (i.e. non-electrical) to be tested or used for internal administrative purposes e.g. a paper-clip.
If a business can only make money by buying cheap grey market high-risk components then it should not exist. If a business is doing that to be greedy then it has decided to run the risk of getting burnt.
With expert counterfeiters these days, the only way to minimise your risk is to pay the 'going price' and buy from a reputable dealer. Only idiots buy cheap goods from the back of a van in a car park more than once. If you are lucky, the goods are stolen and the negative result is that your purchase is promoting crime. If you are unlucky, the negative result is that the goods will be substandard. The result is always negative. Go watch some early ‘Only Fools and Horses’ episodes to learn what ‘back-of-the-lorry’ goods are.
This morning FTDI confirmed to me that Farnell is an 'official channel partner' and Farnell confirmed that 'order code 1146032rl is sourced directly from FTDI'.
If you have suffered a PID 0000 and want to do something constructive, then post the details of what the product is and where you purchased it from here. It may help identify the counterfeit supply routes.