
A 33 year old Bradford shopkeeper who admitted renting out counterfeit DVDs has been sentenced to four months in jail suspended for a year.
Bradford Crown Court heard that Shahid Ali, was the leaseholder of Movie Palace on Manchester Road when 4,000 DVDs were seized by police on January 7 last year.
A sample of 67 DVDs were analysed by experts from the Federation Against Copyright Theft and all of them were found to be copies displaying false trademarks with an estimated loss to the retail industry of £8.11 per item.
Sentencing was based on the 67 DVDs tested as whilst the court was told the Police felt they were representative of what was being sold at the Movie Palace Ali’s defence team argued that a great deal of his merchandise was genuine.
Ali of Dudley Street, Wakefield Road, Bradford who pleaded guilty to 20 charges of possessing goods with a false trademark for sale or hire was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for a year, and ordered to perform 100 hours of unpaid work.