Tilleke & Gibbins Museum of Counterfeit Goods in Bangkok

^{“Its purpose is to educate the public about intellectual property infringement” says James Evans, a T&G consultant of the Counterfeit Museum.}

The Tilleke & Gibbins Museum of Counterfeit Goods in Bangkok is not your usual run of the mill museum. It’s quite a quirky museum that houses over 4,000 items that infringe trademarks, patents and copyrights. It is one of the largest counterfeit goods museums in the world.

^{Genuine and fake Yamaha Guitars}

The museum was originally created in 1989 with around 100 items, so has grown substantially over the years.

^{Tilleke & Gibbins Museum of Counterfeit Goods}

The goods in this museum are split into 14 broad categories – clothing, footwear, watches and eye-wear, accessories, cosmetics and perfumes, food and household products, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, copyrighted works, stationery and office supplies, automotive parts, tools, electrical devices, and miscellaneous products.

^{Genuine and fake Starbucks cups}

The idea for creating the museum came from David Lyman, senior partner at Tilleke & Gibbins, after seeing a similar museum at a law firm in Hong Kong.

^{Toblerone vs. Tamborine – spot the fake}

Some fakes, like the Tamborine version of Toblerone, are very easy to spot. But would you know whether those pot noodles were genuine or fake?

^{Potentially dangerous fake goods}

When many people think of fake goods, they usually imagine fake handbags, watches or t-shirts, but some fakes are potentially very dangerous.These include fake drugs, fake cosmetics and fake baby food, as shown above.

^{Branded toothpaste – genuine and fake}

You might be happy paying less for the toothpaste above, but how do you know whether the ingredients are dangerous or not?

^{T-shirts that fall foul of copyright and trademark laws}

Above is a very large collection of t-shirts that breach various laws.

^{Array of goods at the Museum of Counterfeit Goods}

The museum is fairly small, and 20-30 minutes should be enough time to see everything there.

^{Propaganda lamps}

Propaganda is a very popular Thai company that makes a range of items including lamps, as shown above. Their products are often copied by others.

^{Fake and genuine spark plugs}

It seems that almost everything available is copied these days. Above you can see some fake and genuine spark plugs. I doubt most people would be able to tell the difference.

^{Fake and genuine branded staplers}

Even office supplies aren’t safe from the counterfeiters.

^{Washing powder}

Could you tell the difference between these two washing powders?

^{These engines look almost identical}

The engines above look almost identical, but which is the genuine one?

How to Tell If Goods Are Fake

So how do you tell if goods are fake or genuine. Just follow the three Ps – Price, Place, Packaging. If the prices is much lower than you expect, if the goods are sold in a place where you wouldn’t expect them to be sold or if the packaging looks inferior, then you should start to wonder where you are buying fake goods. It should be obvious that a branded t-shirt that normally sells for $40 in a mall but is for sale for $4 in a street market is almost definitely fake.