I don't think Tobacco Control understands intellectual property

It seems someone has been busted for selling under the counter fags. There's a lot of it about around here and it's frowned upon. Personally I think these people are doing a enormous public service at great risk to themselves. It's just a pity I only seem to find out someone is selling cheap tobacco when they get busted and end up in the paper

Salim Balesaria was jailed for 18 months in June 2017 for selling counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco and tobacco products without health warnings from two shops in Nelson and one in Accrington.
County Councillor Albert Atkinson, deputy leader of the council, with responsibility for trading standards, said: "We have an excellent trading standards team, whose record speaks for itself in terms of the number of convictions secured over recent years of people involved in the supply of illegal tobacco.
"This report shows the lengths they will go to in bringing these people to justice, and just how determined they have to be to overcome often sophisticated attempts to cover up these activities, and the identities of those responsible."

So jail for two crimes:
Selling counterfeit fags
Selling fags without health warnings

What are health warnings? Well these days, it's the full plain packs malarky. Green background, massive picture of some horrible unrelated disease. Brand name in small letters. No logos. Absolutely no intellectual property what so ever

And what are fake fags? Presumably, fags knocked together cheaply in a makeshift factory and sold as proper brand names

So who is responsible for policing these things?

The intellectual property office crime and enforcement report revealed the lengths to which...

"The intellectual property office"

Hmm

So if you steal the intellectual property of a tobacco company, by selling fake packs branded with their name, that's a crime?
But if you are a tobacco company, you're not allowed to use your intellectual property on your packets, because the Government made that a crime?

So the Government are the only people who can legally steal your intellectual property?
And once they have it, if someone else steals it, they will be prosecuted?
By the Intellectual Property Office?

I need a smoke...