Yeah, but looking at the physical differences between the chips it's probably not something that difficult to ensure. The counterfeit chips are built in a totally different fashion, with different size and materials, on a different process tech.
But that's impossible for something like a Windows driver to determine.
The only way the FTDI driver could determine if the chip counterfeit was a slight difference in how the counterfeit chips handled a certain EEPROM write. And the counterfeiters will be sure the next revision of the chip takes care of this corner case.
Sure, the driver doesn't know the manufacturing process. His point is the chips are simply so different, there are bound to be obvious ways for the driver to tell.
If the chip manufacturer needed this incredibly subtle trick to determine a real chip from a fake at the driver level, what does that say about how close the counterfeiters got?
The chip dies may be incredibly different, but the fake operated 99.99% like the real one. There were no "obvious ways" to tell them apart.
