Elevation's pride and joy, the Anchor, which holds headphones
A gadget maker, whose product was copied and sold through Amazon, is claiming that Amazon's measures for countering fakes is weak due to its lax policies and policing.
Elevation Lab founder Casey Hopkins said counterfeiters should be a simple problem for Amazon to solve as it had a Brand Registry to keep track of legitimate brands and could use software to weed out fakes.
"Why Amazon doesn't do this is mind-blowing and makes it complicit in the rampant counterfeiting on its platform. We are definitely not the first seller for this to happen to." he said, on the company blog.
He added that Amazon's policies promoted this as sellers could remain anonymous and know they would face no legal recourse beyond having their listing removed and counterfeit inventory returned (not destroyed).
Elevation Labs makes a product called the Anchor, an anchor-shaped piece of moulded silicone that sticks to the bottom of a desk to be used to hang things like headphones.
Hopkins said seller Suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd made a dubious copy of its product and took all its sales for five days by auto-lowering the price in relation to Elevation Labs' pricing.
He said another problem is that when customers unknowingly buy fake versions of a product, the original company's reputation is tarnished and also lowered customers' trust in the platform once they realise they've received knockoffs.
"And if you've paid Amazon a boat load of money to advertise the product you've designed, built, invested in, and shipped – it's further insult to injury. And when new counterfeit sellers keep popping up every week so you have to play whack-a-mole with Amazon, which take days to remove the sellers, it's the beginning of the end for your small business," he said.
In a reply sent to CNET, an Amazon spokesperson said they strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products and invest heavily with both funds and company energy to ensure their anti-counterfeit policy is followed.
Amazon said it worked closely with vendors, sellers and rights owners to strengthen protections for their brands on Amazon, with rights owners able to register with Amazon's Brand Registry service to manage and protect their brand and intellectual property rights.
It added that rights owners who had product authenticity concerns could notify them to initiate an investigation, after which bad actors would have their products removed and have legal action taken against them.
"In order to detect bad actors and potentially counterfeit products, we employ dedicated teams of software engineers, research scientists, program managers, and investigators to operate and continually refine our anti-counterfeiting program," it said.
