I had seen the celebration, and of course I knew Disney had not authorized the use of the characters. But here's what is really meant by aggressive enforcement, and it doesn't mean asking the government to file a diplomatic protest.

I used to be a local attorney for the syndicates that represented the Peanuts comic strip and Garfield. When a place sold unauthorized reproductions, we moved quickly. A private investigator would purchase the item or otherwise witness the use. On the strength of his report, we would file a lawsuit against the unauthorized user (we did not send cease and desist letters). We were willing to negotiate a dismissal of the lawsuit in exchange for an agreement to refrain from further infringement and forfeiture (for destruction) of the offending materials.

We went after bakeries for putting frosting characters on cakes, and day-care centers for painting characters on the walls. We also went after the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo-Nazis for using Peanuts characters in hate literature.

Thus, if there was aggressive enforcement today, those chip markers would be sold, the seller would be sued (and would mess his or her trousers when the suit papers arrived and they consulted an intellectual property lawyer about whether the law really does impose presumed damages of $200,000), and you would never see those items on eBay again.

Preservation of property rights requires enforcement of existing copyrights and trademarks, or the mark can be forfeited to the realm of public domain. I was peripherally involved in a lawsuit that threatened to strip The Beatles of their trademark because they allowed so many bootlegged products and the Beatlemania stage production to exist. (The Beatles were so busy suing each other for a long time that they could never coordinate properly to sue others; once they made peace, things changed.) Of course, different trademark holders act in different ways (we were definitely aggressive), and don't always pursue cottage industries.