
Counterfeits on Amazon cost Warren bird feeder business $1.5M - petee
https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/
======
ecommerceguy
>>In a statement on its website, Amazon also said its employees “work hard
every day to help ensure all products offered in our store are safe and
authentic.”

Bullshit. The front line employees that receive inbound product don't enforce
any policy and actually Amazon encourages to deal with disputes only after a
product is sold, shipped and a customer complains. That's the Bezos way. Fact.
Let's discuss grocery products in glass containers real quick if anyone wants
to argue...

I admit, we'd sell counterfeit products if I didn't have morals. We push all
the AMZ limits we can. I could write a book on this subject.

~~~
privateSFacct
This also makes me laugh out loud.

If Amazon gave two craps about some of this stuff it would be cut WAY back.

For a few years at least every Apple branded product on amazon I bought was
100% fake - lazy fakes too. I ended up having to buy from Apple directly to
get something legit. You are telling me brands haven't complained about this?
I find that totally hard to believe.

The crap amazon sells is going to bring them down.

I've got used stuff sold as new (complete with debries from previous owner).

If they cared they would.

Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.

Enforce clear fraud issues with account bans and forfeit the deposit (ie, the
whole changed 5 star listing selling a totally different product).

Segregate inventory by seller, and enforce consequences on seller for product
quality issues.

Have a QC team sample 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 items and 1 item per seller
each year. If it claims USB 3- test to spec, claims waterproof test to spec,
claims safe for kids - test for lead. Whoever does this will win in long run.
Who wants lead in the product they give to their kids.

This reputation issue could bleed into AWS. Why trust a company that CANNOT
get control over its marketplace. The fakes are horrible.

~~~
tessting
This strikes me as very idealistic.

They are selling more than double the amount of stuff they were 5 years ago,
and are over half of US ecommerece. You might care about getting a fake
charger, but 90% of people don't give a crap if it's 30% cheaper than the real
thing and magically appears at their house the next day.

[https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu...](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenue)

I think AWS and retail/AFT are basically two different companies. I don't
think what happens in one reflects on or affects the other, at all.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
People do care about fake chargers when they make their phone explode or their
house burn down.

~~~
Mdk25
Genuine Samsung premium phones can do that too.

Just saying...

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Sometimes yes, but if it happens there will be a very public recall, and they
will replace the device for free. A crappy charger someone bulk- ordered
white-label is not going to have either of those things.

~~~
Mdk25
Replacing a phone isn't going to help someone who's house burned down

~~~
friendlybus
You can plausibly sue Samsung for it. Does AMZ have the same accountability?

------
alister
Along with counterfeits, another issue that makes shopping unpleasant is that
many products are superfically different but underneath are the same thing.
You can see this most clearly in a retail store when the products are side by
side. Walmart might have 30 kinds of wall clocks with wood vs plastic frame,
with or without Roman numerals, but the actual clock mechanism on the back is
the same cheap black box. Home Depot has dozens of kitchen exhaust hoods with
well-known brand names, but it looks to me like the internals
(fan/filter/exhaust parts) are all made by the same company. A pharmacy gives
the illusion of hundreds of different cold medicines, painkillers, and
antacids, but it's the same few drugs packaged in hundreds of different ways.

I don't know the solution to this. I wish there were some way to signal when
stuff is 90% to 99% identical to cut down on pointless duplicate products
and/or to make comparisons easier.

~~~
jacobkg
Fun aside, if you buy a cheap wall clock from a big box store, you can often
swap out the clock movement with a vastly superior one for very little money.
A nice Seiko movement with a sweep second hand can be had for under $20.

~~~
tomcam
Not trying to be snarky, genuinely interested: what are the advantages of the
superior movement?

~~~
ngorge
The gears are manufactured to better tolerances. This means they make a lot
less noise. A cheap movement can be heard across the room, a Seiko is silent.

Because the parts fit better, there is less friction. Less of a load on the
motor means the battery lasts much longer in a Seiko.

They also keep time better.

~~~
halbritt
A great deal of their reputation is based on their ability to produce precise
quartz movements, ostensibly resistant to temperature changes, etc.

------
destitude
Amazon has caused this to itself in order to maximize its own short-term
profits. In the past 1-3 years their goal has been to reduce their own
inventory by shifting it to 3rd party sellers and let them deal with the
overhead of inventory. This is why counterfeits and crappy products have been
proliferating on Amazon and why I have started to avoid purchasing from Amazon
all-together. I wonder if they realize how much damage this is costing them in
reputation or if they don't care because it still results in more profit for
themselves.

~~~
amelius
In a few years, Alibaba will have a better reputation than Amazon.

~~~
azinman2
Based on what? No name brands, just loads and loads of direct from factory
crapware and knock offs in all shapes and sizes.

~~~
heavyset_go
When it comes to electronics and plastic wares, most of the stuff on Amazon is
just white label products from Alibaba suppliers. Most of the time the same
stock photos are used in both the Amazon and AliExpress listings.

~~~
billti
The stock photos are a major clue for me. As soon as I see a picture of the
product badly photoshopped into some stock images, with poor copy pasted over
it, then I close the tab. I don’t care how many stars or reviews it has.

------
yoz-y
I am curious about the advice at the end:

> Torres said she encourages customers to verify the seller is legitimate
> before placing any orders.

How? Is there some way to verify that a seller on amazon is legitimate among
the slew of fake reviews and stock mingling in warehouses?

~~~
joegahona
I was just asking this to myself today when browsing safety-razor blades on
Amazon. (I was not able to buy them directly from the manufacturer’s website.)
When I tried to start filtering by who sells it, I just got a bunch of names
that meant nothing. I eventually bought them on Walmart’s site because, I
guess I trust it more? Some of the comments on Amazon had the dreaded “this
has changed recently,” and the last thing I want to do is scrape my face with
counterfeit razor blades.

~~~
jcoffland
Customers saying "this has changed recently" means little. For example, I
found such reviews for a pet flea product. When I investigated further I found
similar reviews both very recent and going back 4, 6 and up to 8 years.
Perhaps there are random bad batches but I suspect that part of the problem is
the perception that a product is different. People often fail to recognize
other factors such as changes in their own usage patterns, or in this case,
changes in their local flea population.

~~~
LegitShady
the flipside is also true - sometimes the product changes but the listing
stays similar with the same URL. I buy why protein isolate and the listing on
amazon changed to a blend of isolate and hydrolysate without any change in
brand or product name - just a slight change in the packaging.

It's possible the product did change every 2 years or so.

------
jlengrand
"Our European visitors are important to us.

This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area
while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable
EU laws."

-> Well, not that important that you can just stop the tracking for a second for us apparently :S.

~~~
djaychela
Funnily enough, I was just thinking exactly that - and wondering just how much
tracking that site does that it's not straightforward for them to stop doing
it (and/or deal with data they had previously collected).

Or is it just a knee-jerk reaction to GDPR that some non-EU companies have
adopted and has now stuck?

~~~
jlengrand
Both options are indeed plausible. I'd also add the "we don't get enough of
those visitors that we care even taking the five minutes it would take to stop
the tracking for those" or the "wow, stop tracking for a given crowd sounds
diificult to achieve".

------
erichurkman
Their quality control, or lack thereof, also extends into Prime Now. It is now
a game when I get a Prime Now delivery: what did they replace without telling
me, what products did they get wrong, and most critically: what did they
overbill me for?

It's now to a point I weigh everything coming in, and over half of the items
are off weight, some egregiously so (0.2 oz of jalapeno, but billed for 1
pound; .5 pound of chicken but billed for 3; a sliver of broccoli but billed
for 2 pounds; the list is endless).

~~~
smabie
Why are you buying food on Amazon? It’s kind of weird.

~~~
erichurkman
Amazon has Prime Now, a grocery delivery service mostly via Whole Foods and a
few other stores in major metro areas. Grocery delivery isn't anything new in
big cities, but their UI and selection is far above anyone else.

(Unfortunately.)

~~~
34679
Most major grocery stores allow you to order delivery directly through their
website now. There's no need to involve a 3rd party and their markup.

------
melzarei
Link for EU

[https://outline.com/zCuTHm](https://outline.com/zCuTHm)

~~~
tobr
”Our European visitors are important to us.” I’m trying to imagine how they
decided to go with this headline for the screen that tells European visitors
to get lost.

~~~
aritmo
The message is that they are not good enough in handling privacy to serve EU
customers.

~~~
hgoel
Or more accurately that they don't make enough from the EU to justify dealing
with the GDPR mess.

~~~
StavrosK
It's only a mess if you can't be bothered to respect people's privacy.

~~~
perl4ever
It appears that "respecting peoples' privacy" currently equates to having an
overlay with a button to accept cookies, and a message stating that using the
website means accepting <whatever>. So I haven't figured out what the button
means, but to preserve maximum uncertainty, I try not to click it.

~~~
StavrosK
You may want to read a bit about what the GDPR mandates.

~~~
perl4ever
Why? I don't run a website that collects information on people. Also, I'm not
under the delusion that I'm a lawyer.

------
ChuckMcM
I'm thinking this will be one of the ways that Amazon can be "disrupted." If
Walmart (for example) re-tooled their online platform such that they kept
counterfeits out and rapidly identified bad actors, the trust in their
platform could grow against the name recognition of Amazon. At that point
Amazon would be stuck playing catch up and that makes it hard to innovate.
Also, its possible a completely new brand could be born, sort of the 'Angies
List' of online retail.

~~~
bjornjaja
I think they should be disrupted with a decentralized solution where people
buy and produce locally. None of this garbage sold en masse

~~~
arkitaip
Decentralized has become the de facto nonsense solution advocated on HN to any
problem, it seems.

~~~
erikpukinskis
You just called that person’s comment “nonsense” and lumped it in with a vague
category of other supposedly nonsense comments. That’s not a useful
contribution to the conversation.

If you don’t understand what they are proposing, ask a question. I know
exactly what they’re talking about and I agree that decentralized services
underpinning markets of local goods will play an increasingly important role
in the economy.

------
jameson
Why aren't these counterfeits and/or Amazon getting sued by the original
companies?

Isn't this just a market competition if other company's able to make cheaper
product out of original idea _and_ does not violate the law?

I was under impression that any product without an IP (copyright, patent, etc)
is subject to "counterfeits" case like this.

p.s. I'm not a lawyer

~~~
jcmeyrignac
LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) is one of the clients of the company where
I work. LVMH fights hard against counterfeits.

Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give even
one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.

And the funny thing is that we cannot use AWS because of this rule!

~~~
nikanj
> Amazon is so bad at handling counterfeits that LVMH decided to never give
> even one penny to Amazon, so you cannot find their products on Amazon.

I bet I can find plenty of counterfeit ones, though

~~~
bencollier49
Interesting - if you search for "Louis Vuitton" on Amazon, a lot of stuff
which is superficially similar appears.

Has there been any ruling on the applicability of trademark law to situations
like this?

------
chmaynard
The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that Amazon made a decision early
on to do very little curation of the products they sell. During the years when
they were mostly selling books from established publishers, this wasn't a big
issue.

When Amazon began selling everything under the sun, the number of vendors
exploded. In retrospect, Amazon should have made a big effort to carefully
curate all these vendors and their products before listing them on Amazon.com.
But that would have been very expensive and no one was telling Amazon they had
do that.

The Amazon approach is to move fast and capture market share, without much
regard for product quality or ethical concerns. Unfortunately, the rest of the
tech industry seems to be following their lead.

------
Jaygles
I wonder if this is an oversight by Amazon on failing to scale its anti-
counterfeit measures. Maybe they didn't appropriately evaluate how large the
issue would become and they're stuck with trying to amend a system that wasn't
designed to combat the issue at the scale they are operating at.

I'm interested in what sort of solution will eventually be effective at
stopping this. Hopefully for Amazon it won't be inspecting every single item
that passes through its doors.

~~~
creato
The problem is the long tail of sellers operating on the marketplace. With a
long tail of sellers, you get a long tail of fraud and bullshit too.

When you search on Amazon for random basic goods, you'll get _thousands_ of
results from insane numbers of gibberish sounding sellers. But there might be
only a few dozen _unique_ results. It's going to be basically impossible to
combat fraud when this is allowed.

I'd even consider the "legitimate" case of this (an OEM selling the same
product to hundreds/thousands of sellers to resell) to be borderline fraud as
well. It's basically reputation/review laundering.

~~~
Lammy
These days when I end up on one of those Amazon search results filled with
obviously-identical no-name goods it’s my cue to head over to Aliexpress
instead. The product I’m getting is the same garbage, but at least I
recalibrate my expectations and even save a few bucks by cutting out one layer
of middleman.

~~~
imtringued
I have never understood this argument. I have seen lots of American/Japanese
high quality brands that manufacture in China and they often cost an
insignificantly higher amount than the chinese equivalent The difference is
that I don't have to wait months for the product to arrive and the trusted
brand is massively reducing the risk of poor quality because they actually
have to follow the QC standards of the developing wolrd. Meanwhile on
Aliexpress the truly cheap stuff is often just garbage. No savings there.

~~~
Lammy
We aren't disagreeing. I'm not talking about high-quality brands who happen to
manufacture in China. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but
have you ever landed on a search result page where multiple items from
different brands were visibly identical products? Sometimes down to using the
exact same photo. Those are the situations I'm talking about.

------
wingi
> This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic
> Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with
> applicable EU laws.

The access is limited since May 2017?

~~~
TylerE
Can't imagine Euro visitors are...at all...cared about by a US local news
outlet.

~~~
pergadad
It's because they don't want to give anyone an option to opt out of data
collection - easier to lock out all EU than actually stop/reduce/give choice
for data collection.

~~~
TylerE
It really isn't. I used to work in IT for a newspaper. They _really_ are
hyper-local. They don't went to spend a cent on even out-of-state visitors,
much less out-of-continent.

Resources are tight, and the ROI is non-existent.

~~~
oneplane
But if a law came in to effect that requires them to not abuse customer data
in their local area as well, there suddenly would be a 'ROI' on that?

Seems to me they chose to simply not care about what data they collect on who
from the start and it will bite them in the ass eventually.

~~~
imtringued
They don't care because EU visitors don't bring enough ad revenue.

------
fortran77
I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that Jeff Bezo's online store should be
forced to compensate Warren for all their lost business now and into the
future, and to make sure that everyone knows they've been enabling the knock-
off business. It's outrageous that Bezos enables this sort of "collateral
damage." If he can't stop this sort of thing, he should be shut down.

------
jdkee
Simply put, it is not in Amazon’s interest to police counterfeits as it is not
in Facebook’s interest to police speech.

------
ikeboy
Not sure about that number - they give no details on how it's calculated and
anyways it's presented as being sales, not profits.

Edit: [https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/18/how-amazons-
counterfe...](https://www.marketplace.org/2019/11/18/how-amazons-counterfeit-
problem-reached-a-bird-feeder-manufacturer-in-rhode-island/) has more details
and is where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from. Says 1.5 million is
4% of sales, so they did around 37 million in sales.

~~~
meritt
> Not sure about that number

Based on what? Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm
suspicious of that dollar amount" [1]?. The fact that it's revenue and not
sales doesn't somehow make the headline false. It's still a loss of revenue.

The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant
counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity
for consumers.

> where OP ironically appears to be ripping off from

It's a local news station. Watch the video. They interviewed the manufacturer.
They likely read the original story and decided to bring additional attention
to a local business.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality)

~~~
ikeboy
>Why would your gut reaction to this entire story be "I'm suspicious of that
dollar amount"

Because it's presented without any explanation or context, and it's difficult
to see how it could be reasonably estimated. The headline is literally false.
Losing revenue, even if that estimate is accurate, is not correctly described
as losing money. It's kind of how cops inaccurately report "street value" of
confiscated drugs - see e.g.
[https://www.cjr.org/analysis/drug_bust.php](https://www.cjr.org/analysis/drug_bust.php)

>The broader point of this story and others is that Amazon has a rampant
counterfeit goods problem and they do little to nothing to ensure authenticity
for consumers.

And this point is wrong, of course. If anything, they go too far - I've seen
many victims of their overzealous enforcement and am one myself. There's been
many lawsuits by companies that have been blocked from selling despite selling
only authentic products. That's hardly consistent with them doing little to
nothing.

~~~
meritt
Yes I'm aware of your case [1]. You sold non-retail unpackaged electronics on
Amazon, you are not an authorized reseller, and were accused of selling
counterfeit goods. TP-Link got you banned from Amazon. Now you're suing TP-
Link for $5M-10M because you lost ~$100k/mo profit.

But the story above is about actual counterfeit goods. Not people reselling
wholesale goods for below MAPs to retail customers.

[1]
[https://pdfhost.io/v/zU6v@9u0_Microsoft_Word_TSI_complaint6d...](https://pdfhost.io/v/zU6v@9u0_Microsoft_Word_TSI_complaint6docx.pdf)

~~~
ikeboy
I'm responding to your point that Amazon does "little to nothing to ensure
authenticity for consumers."

I disagree, and I'd imagine the plaintiffs in the following cases would as
well:

[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620676/v-fjallraven-u...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16620676/v-fjallraven-
usa-retail-llc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16601182/ems-imports-
ll...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16601182/ems-imports-llc-v-u-tec-
group-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16462329/ly-
berditchev-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16462329/ly-berditchev-
corp-v-lavazza-premium-coffees-corp/)
[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16139905/eng-sales-
llc-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16139905/eng-sales-llc-v-mary-
ruyan-llc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16610999/big-birds-
llc-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16610999/big-birds-llc-v-cc-
beauty-collection-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16440121/oj-
commerce-ll...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16440121/oj-commerce-llc-
v-standard-sales-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16438724/oj-
commerce-ll...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16438724/oj-commerce-llc-
v-actiontec-electronics-inc/)
[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15028460/dj-direct-
inc-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/15028460/dj-direct-inc-v-omm-
imports-inc/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp-
lin...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6846972/starke-v-tp-link-usa-
corporation/) [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/13477612/johnson-v-
inco...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/13477612/johnson-v-incopro-inc/)

Or for that matter, the 12,000+ people who've signed a petition complaining
about Amazon's overzealous enforcement at [https://www.change.org/p/jeff-
bezos-amazon-com-should-only-s...](https://www.change.org/p/jeff-bezos-amazon-
com-should-only-suspend-the-asin-not-the-seller). Read through a few of the
comments there.

False positives rates go up when trying to minimize the false negative rate.
As such, evidence that the false positive rate is high shows that actual
counterfeits are being enforced heavily as well.

Anyway, OP doesn't mention any specific actions they expected Amazon to take
that weren't taken. It doesn't say, for example, that they asked Amazon to
take down counterfeits and were refused.

~~~
meritt
I think we're in agreement regarding Amazon: They don't take an active role in
policing their marketplace. They have a "report this listing" mechanism that
essentially bans a seller outright, with no effort to validate the claim. They
just assume it's legit by default and the seller is always in the wrong. But
to be clear, the brands are the ones taking action (and thus the defendant in
these lawsuits), Amazon has essentially no role.

It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of
_both_ consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and 2)
consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an
"unauthorized reseller"

~~~
ikeboy
I'd mostly agree with that, with the caveat that they will often restrict
particular listings or brands that got a high volume of complaints, and
require proof of purchase to sell. They also flag sellers that have large
sales increases in a short period of time.

>It's my view that Amazon themselves should be taking action on behalf of both
consumers and sellers to ensure that: 1) products are authentic, and b)
consumers can get the best prices possible even if that's from an
"unauthorized reseller"

This is reasonable. They could require proof of purchase for all products, or
perhaps for all products where more than 10 units are being sold.

I also think there should be a higher bar for foreign sellers, or perhaps a
bond that must be posted.

~~~
dylz
I don't see why they don't require proof of purchase for every single item in
their supply chain by a third party reseller, with valid, verifiable invoices
issued only by the OEM.

~~~
ikeboy
1\. The cost to verify all of those would be extreme. They ship billions of
units in a year, that's tens of millions of invoices at a minimum.

2\. "issued only by the OEM" but there are many valid suppliers that are not
the brand owner. Even Amazon themselves buy from many vendors that are not the
brand owner. Amazon wants those suppliers and third party sellers because they
bring down pricing and have a wider selection than they'd get if they only
allowed sellers buying direct.

------
naithemilkman
I remember reading about Birkenstock having the same issue at a much larger
scale.

------
ikurei
Web Archive link for EU citizens (the site blocks access from EU to avoid
having to comply with data protection laws):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191226100007/https://www.wpri....](https://web.archive.org/web/20191226100007/https://www.wpri.com/news/call-12-for-
action/counterfeits-on-amazon-cost-warren-bird-feeder-business-1-5m/)

------
charwalker
Another company that will drop Amazon due to heavy losses and open another
area where Amazon can sell its own product or chosen son in its place.

Amazon is like Youtube. It's a great place to establish your brand and gain
popularity but you better have a private site to fall back on to host your
content and store.

------
fnord77
see lots of reviews lately on amazon for various products where people are
complaining about counterfeits. stuff you wouldn't think would be worth
counterfeiting

------
peter_retief
In my simple understanding of the law isn't Amazon liable to pay damages?

------
wayanon
I would enjoy a Netflix documentary on this whole topic.

------
Snetry
Sadly the site is blocked in the EU :(

------
34679
Start reporting counterfeits at [https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Report-
Fake-Goods](https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=Report-Fake-Goods)

The following was taken from the DOJ's "Reporting Intellectual Property Crime:
A Guide for Victims of Counterfeiting, Copyright Infringement, and Theft of
Trade Secrets":

"Counterfeit Trademarks: The Trademark Counterfeiting Act, 18 U.S.C. §
2320(a), provides penalties of up to ten years imprisonment and a $2 million
fine for a defendant who “intentionally traffics or attempts to traffic in
goods or services and knowingly uses a counterfeit mark on or in connection
with such goods or services.”

The key word there is "traffic".

"Counterfeit Labeling: The counterfeit labeling provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 2318
prohibit trafficking in counterfeit labels designed to be affixed to phono
records, copies of computer programs, motion pictures and audiovisual works,
as well as trafficking in counterfeit documentation or packaging for computer
programs. Violations are punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment and a
$250,000 fine."

Again, "trafficking". Just need to prove the "knowingly" part, which can't be
done without establishing a clear pattern of trafficking in counterfeits.

"Why Should You Report Intellectual Property Crime? Intellectual property is
an increasingly important part of the United States' economy, representing its
fastest growing sector. For example, in 2002 copyright industries alone
contributed approximately 6%, or $626 billion, to America’s gross domestic
product, and employed 4% of America’s workforce, according to an economic
study commissioned by the International Intellectual Property Alliance. As the
nation continues to shift from an industrial economy to an information-based
economy, the assets of the country are increasingly based in intellectual
property. In recognition of this trend, the Department of Justice is waging
the most aggressive campaign against the theft and counterfeiting of
intellectual property in its history. The priority of criminal intellectual
property investigations and prosecutions nationwide has been increased, and
additional resources on both the prosecutive and investigative levels have
been brought to bear on the growing problem of intellectual property theft.
Effective prosecution of intellectual property crime, however, also requires
substantial assistance from its victims.."

[https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olp/docs/ip_task...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olp/docs/ip_task_force_report.pdf#page=63)

From:

[https://www.stopfakes.gov/welcome](https://www.stopfakes.gov/welcome)

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I wonder how much Trump really hates Bezos.

If Trump really does hate Bezos, he could go on TV and give a national address
stating that Amazon has repeatedly been facilitating the illegal import of
dangerous products from China. In addition, this has persisted despite
repeated complaints. Therefore to protect innocent Americans, US Customs has
seized all Amazon inventory at all warehouses and will be examining each item
to check if it is authentic and passes the relevant safety standards.

~~~
LegitShady
can we not make everything about trump and fantasizing about him going on
tv/twitter etc to bash a specific company for a specific problem?

Doesn't seem realistic or useful.

------
Router
warren buffett's startup ?

~~~
halfjoking
Reading the headline I was thinking.... no wonder Elizabeth Warren REALLY
HATES Amazon.

She's determined to break up Amazon because they cost her $1.5 million!

~~~
Router
She could've had a nice dinner with that money.

------
m0zg
The most surprising part of this story to me is that someone manages to make
millions of dollars on bird feeders.

~~~
RandomTisk
I got my folks a bird feeder a few years ago when they bought a new house. I
grew up a few miles from there, remembering only sparrows, blackbirds, robins,
etc and on rare occasions a yellow bird, or a brown bird, or red-wing
blackbird. But with a bird feeder, it was amazing to see the number of unique
birds that show up now every few minutes, birds of all colors that I didn't
even know lived in the area.

~~~
perl4ever
I was in a home improvement store and noticed that a sparrow had found its way
to the aisle with the bird seed.

~~~
LegitShady
why does a home improvement store have bird seed/

~~~
chihuahua
Because these stores usually have a garden section, and bird feeders and bird
seed are usually stocked in a garden section of a store. Presumably, the
people who solve the optimization problem "given the amount of space available
and the buying habits of our customers, how do we optimize our sales volume"
have concluded that bird seed is one of the thousands of items they should
stock.

~~~
perl4ever
Yes, and I thought it was interesting that the birds (or at least some of
them) had solved the problem of "how do we optimize our bird seed consumption"
by going to the source instead of a backyard bird feeder.

------
Zenst
Fakes/copies have always been an issue for companies, but with the move
towards digital platforms, we find we have this odd situation in which we have
a legit company umbrellaring fake/copy sellers and able to profit from such
sales and yet appear totally immune from any repercussions.

But more so, all these transactions are documented, not cash in hand style
transactions.

So, will we see some company who sells a branded product taking Amazon seems
not like a case of if, but when and what angle. Meanwhile, such issues in the
digital era get dealt with by politicians grumberling fashionably and such
digital domains offing some token informal(non legally binding law) compromise
that enables politicians to be seen to be doing there job but the digital
companies doing it for them in a way that suits them far better than is
appreciated.

But thanks to the digital age, all those sales of fake/copy products will be
logged and are just a growing liability that Amazon is not completely immune
from.

~~~
dba7dba
_we find we have this odd situation in which we have a legit company
umbrellaring fake /copy sellers and able to profit from such sales and yet
appear totally immune from any repercussions._

I've known of many small apparel maker/distributor/seller based out of Los
Angeles. Over the years, I heard/read/saw so many Police/Marshall personnel
raid these businesses to confiscate fake merchandise as if raiding an illegal
drug dealer and treat the owner/workers as if they were drug dealers. Ok, well
it doesn't happen every week/month but still a regular occurrence.

They were breaking the law and so yes police was sent in. But these law
enforcement resource was basically acting on the behest of large businesses
like Nike/Gucci/etc.

And now, we have Amazon (even bigger than all other businesses) basically
enabling fake merchandise sellers to sell fake merchandise (hurting other
legitimate businesses) while Amazon gets a cut.

But there is no business more powerful than Amazon to force law enforcement to
act and raid warehouses and HQ of Amazon.

Isn't capitalism wonderful?

~~~
Zenst
Yes, whilst we have trading standards who have mystery shoppers to track down
and then close down retailers and/or leverage large fines. The transition into
the digital age has seen the model of enforcement fail to keep pace and whilst
the Amazons and Ebay's have made some effort, the incentive and drives are
lacking in clout to make any effort just scratch the surface. Which has like
most, fallen to become consumer driven in a review standard open to all and
with that, equally abused.

It is not until there is some major court case or other financial impacting
precedent being set, that the current state will only carry on playing out.

Do we see more fake products on the high street than we do online, oh yes.
It's small things like that in which fall into the additional costs of a
bricks and mortar store over an online shop and also does entail more rules
and regulations as well as checks. How many stores route there POS system thru
another country/state to lower taxes - none without breaking the law and yet
online stores, there is always a way.

------
jackyinger
Hey, this title could be easily misconstrued given the prominent US
politician.

Assuming this is an innocent accident and only pointing it out because I’d
misinterpreted it to be a conflict of interest expose.

~~~
taxidump
The title is pretty descriptive, you're only seeing this because your mind
wants to. It's a sign.

Fixed spelling

