Amazon has previously said it would escalate its war on counterfeit merchandise this year, but now the online retail giant is providing more details on how it plans to accomplish that feat. [More]
counterfeits
Counterfeit Sports Gear Is Harder To Stop When Fans Order Directly From China
By 2.2.17
When you’re in the market for a jersey or hat to represent your favorite team, you know that the gear being hawked out on the sidewalk near the stadium is probably not legitimate. Online, things get fuzzier, and sellers of counterfeit merchandise pop back up faster than law enforcement, trademark holders, and even the marketplace sites can knock them down. [More]
Makers Of ‘As Seen On TV’ Products Sue Amazon Over “Rampant” Counterfeiting
By 12.7.16
Companies like Allstar Marketing, Ideavillage Products, and Ontel Products aren’t household names, but you probably recognize the names of their signature products: they’re the companies behind the Snuggie, Copper Fit compression apparel, and Veggetti spiral slicers. These three makers of as-seen-on-TV doodads have sued Amazon, claiming the e-commerce giant allows vendors to sell counterfeit versions of their products — and that those counterfeit items can be found in Amazon’s own warehouses. [More]
Amazon Plans To Escalate War On Fakes In 2017
By 11.28.16
Rampant counterfeiting among Amazon Marketplace sellers is holding the retailer back. There are companies that simply won’t agree to sell their merchandise on the site, given the the company’s known issues with counterfeits, and the concern that genuine and knock-off merchandise could be co-mingled in Amazon warehouses. The online retail giant is now preparing a very public war on counterfeit merchandise. [More]
Designer Brands Complain That Alibaba Isn’t Doing Enough To Ditch Counterfeits
By 9.1.16
Are Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms a wretched hive of fakes and counterfeits, or has the company really made progress in eradicating counterfeiters from its sites? As the U.S. Trade Representative makes a list of which places on the internet tend to sell fakes, that’s an important question: is Alibaba really doing all that it can to root out knockoffs? [More]
Rio Olympics Selling Knockoff Versions Of Its Own Merchandise
By 8.2.16
In an effort to circumvent efforts by counterfeiters, organizers of the Rio Olympics have created a line of products that are, well, knockoffs of the Games’ official merchandise. [More]
Alibaba Founder Jack Ma: No, I Didn’t Mean That Counterfeit Goods Are Better Than Originals
By 6.23.16
Remarks to investors in China by Alibaba Group founder and CEO Jack Ma about the improving quality of counterfeit and knockoff goods must not have gone over well with the foreign name brands that the company hopes to attract to sell on its platforms. Ma sent an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal explaining that he didn’t actually mean that counterfeit goods are better. [More]
Groupon Australia Sold Boxes Of Counterfeit Durex Condoms
By 4.23.15 — Updated: 12.9.16
Overall, Groupon’s transition from a company that sells discount vouchers to a company that sells discount merchandise has gone pretty well. Yet some news from Australia caught our attention when we learned that Groupon in that country sold counterfeit condoms on their website. Now the Australian government is alerting consumers who purchased those condoms that they should probably not use them. [More]
The Hot Potato Principle: Why This Grandma’s Bank Stuck Her With Counterfeit Cash
By 3.9.15
Counterfeit currency operates on the “hot potato” principle. Like the children’s game, the last person caught with the object loses. Once you accept counterfeit cash–even if it’s from a financial institution–it’s yours. This made for a very disappointing birthday gift for a 14-year-old from his grandmother. [More]
Chinese Government Accuses Alibaba Of Selling Fake Goods, Taking Bribes
By 1.28.15
China-based e-commerce megasite Alibaba is catching heat in its home country following a government report that scolds the company for lax controls over the sale of bogus goods to consumers, along with allegations of bribery and using its size to bully merchants from working with Alibaba’s competitors. [More]
Really Cheap Tires? Surprise: They Might Be Risky Counterfeits
By 11.17.14
Everyone knows that the “genuine designer handbag” going for $20 from a street vendor is neither genuine nor designer, and indeed may not even hold up as a bag. But when you go to a reputable retailer and spend what it costs to replace the tires on your car, you expect to get what the real goods. Alas, Consumer Reports has found: just because there’s a brand name you know on the outside of a tire, doesn’t mean you’re getting what you should be. [More]
Oh, Great: China Busted A Counterfeit Durex Condom Mill
By 5.16.13
Two Chinese entrepreneurs came up with a brilliant business idea: they bought regular old no-name condoms from a factory in one province, and bought packaging material with the globally recognized brand name of Durex, as well as Russian name brand Contex and China’s own brand Jissbon. When all of these big brand condoms started hitting the market at cut-rate prices, the authorities noticed, as the authorities tend to do. [More]
Women In Need Of More Cash Simply Bleach A Few $5 Bills & Turn Them Into $100 Instead
By 2.16.12
Boston cops are on the lookout for two women who they say have been particularly clever with a bit of counterfeiting. The suspects were able to get past the iodine pen test by simply bleaching some $5 bills and reprinting them into $100 bills. [More]
5 Commonly Counterfeited Items To Avoid Buying
By 12.2.11
It’s one thing to purchase a generic or store-brand product that has the same ingredients or components but at a lower price; and a completely different thing to buy a truly counterfeit product that might save you cash but could end up doing damage to your body. [More]
China Shuts Down Two Fake Apple stores
By 7.25.11
Chinese officials moved to shut down two detailed fake Apple stores in Kumnmig after a blogger’s post exposing the counterfeits went viral. [More]
Counterfeit World Of Warcraft Theme Park Opens In China
By 7.22.11
The Chinese may have been the first to invent gunpowder and delicious pork-filled fried dumplings, but they have not caught up to the rest of the world when it comes to respecting intellectual property rights. Case in point, the recent opening of an entire themepark dedicated to World of Warcraft and Starcraft, two of the most popular online games in the world, in the Changzhou, Jiangsu province. It’s a sprawling $30 million megaplex spanning 600,000 square meters that aspires to compete with Disney and Universal Studios as a global theme park destination. And it’s a total knockoff. They didn’t pay Blizzard, the company behind those two games, a dime. [More]
Completely Fake Apple Stores Found In China
By 7.20.11
An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off. [More]
The Magical Chinese Hard Drive
By 4.8.11
A customer walked into a Russian hard-drive repair center complaining about his broken 500Gb USB-drive. He had bought it dirt cheap in China but it had a problem. If you saved a movie to it, it would only play the last five minutes. They opened up the case and found inside a 128-MB flash drive working in looped mode. It displays the correct capacity when you plug it in but when you write to it and run out of space, it just overwrites the old data. Two nuts make it feel like it has the right heft. Crafty, crafty counterfeiters! Caveat emptor, if the price is “too good to be true,” it is. [More]
