You'll find all the information you need in this interview from Mixergy titled "Law 101 For Startups with Bill Schreiber of Fenwick & West". If you're not a subscriber, then find the video podcast on iTunes, and you'll be able to watch it there [registration work-around]. You can always read the interview transcript if you prefer. The comments are usually really helpful, so look there if you have more questions.
http://mixergy.com/bill-schreiber-fenwick-west/
Do these photos support the claim that the boxes were just demos shipped mistakenly, or that they were indeed counterfeits that were inserted into the supply chain? Thoughts?
I think the evidence is pretty convincing that they were counterfeits created by people with no connection to Intel.
Putting the CPU/heatsink aside - If you wanted to ship a demo unit, wouldn't you just use the exact same box that you're already producing thousands of in the factory and slap a "demo" sticker on it? Even if you made a separate demo box, there's no reason that the boilerplate text wouldn't just be a copy/paste. It's obvious that someone not familiar with English and French manually copied the text (the French text is even worse than the English; the accents are missing pointing in the wrong direction).
I was thinking the same thing. The poor English, and the even worse translations, seem like a dead giveaway that these are definitely the worst of the worst: FAKE DEMO UNITS! The world will implode in 5.4.3.2.1...
It doesn't make sense. If it were a demo, wouldn't Intel stamp "DEMO" on it all over, so it wouldn't be mistaken for the real thing? Also, as the article points out, why would there be a blank manual in a demo chip, and why would Intel make it look nearly identical to the shipping version, modulo typos?
According to Tom Merrit of CNET & Buzz out Loud, the complete package was fake - foam fan, plastic heatsink, plastic processor, misspelled packaging, etc... It seems like a case or two (nearly 300 processors) of i7 processors were switched for fakes somewhere down the line, before making it to Newegg.
EDIT - Apparently, the processors were pieces of scrap metal.
...and a little bit of commentary from another customer who received a fake/demo i7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmEgSg9m89U