
Feds seize ‘counterfeit Apple AirPods’ that are actually OnePlus Buds - brundolf
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/13/21435637/us-cbp-counterfeit-airpods-oneplus-buds-mixup
======
MrStonedOne
The legal definition of counterfeit product (as realized by CBP's
jurisdiction) boils down to:

Bares a Registered Trademark and does not have a signed letter of authenticity
by the trademark holder authorizing its import.

That is super broad and covers a lot of things most people would think to be
false positives like legit items sold second hand.

But even that doesn't cover thinking OnePlus Buds are AirPods.

~~~
microcolonel
Isn't the fact that nobody involved in this seizure could tell that they
weren't AirPods counterfeits a form of evidence that OnePlus Buds may in some
circumstance be AirPods counterfeits?

~~~
lmm
Maybe it's evidence that AirPods are counterfeit OnePlus Buds.

If you want your customers to be assured of getting the genuine article you
should put an actual trademark on your product. Apple shouldn't get to claim
that anything with a minimalist design is a counterfeit Apple product.

~~~
p49k
They look exactly like AirPods, though, which is a design Apple created, as an
evolution of EarPods. When EarPods were released, they looked unlike any
earbuds ever released, despite the fact that ear buds as a product have
existed for 30 years or more. If it were as simple as “minimalist design” any
of the 100+ ear bud manufacturers of the past 30 years could have designed
something similar.

Apple never gets enough credit for their design work in the general tech
community. Lots of design work can look “obvious” or minimalist in hindsight.

------
tyingq
The CBP is very hard to deal with. I once bought about 100 electronic items
that come with AC adapters to power them.

Unknown to me, the AC adapters had fake UL marks on them. So, the CBP seized
the shipment. I asked if they could just seize the adapters, and explained
that I hadn't even asked for UL listed adapters. No dice. The adapters
represented less than 10% of the value of the shipment. Argh.

And, of course, the Chinese supplier wasn't willing to reimburse me. Now I
have the adapters go in a separate shipment in case something unexpected is
shipped.

~~~
MichaelZuo
Did you try sourcing adaptors without fake markings?

~~~
tyingq
I thought it was pretty clear that the fake markings surprised me and that the
adapters were not the main item sourced.

~~~
arghwhat
It was, but the follow-up action designed to minimize risk of loss when caught
by customs rather than avoiding import of fraudulent goods blurred image of
your intentions.

If you can get the shipments split, I'm sure you could also get them to not
send the power adapters at all. If, however, you needed power adapters, you
need to import proper ones - not just for legal reasons, but for the safety of
the end-users.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
> _It was, but the follow-up action designed to minimize risk of loss when
> caught by customs rather than avoiding import of fraudulent goods blurred
> image of your intentions._

It seems pretty clear to me, I think you're missing the point of the post.
It's that this person is protecting his business in a way that's effective
because the government isn't, and this is what he's forced to do when dealing
with agencies that claim they're looking out for his best interests.

~~~
brendoelfrendo
CBP in this case isn't looking out for _his_ best interest, they're looking
out for the _consumer 's_ best interest. Counterfeit goods? Well, now the
whole thing is suspect. It makes sense to me.

~~~
tyingq
Counterfeit probably isn't the best word for this. It was whatever brand
adapter it said it was. The UL mark was fake.

After this happened I found that's pretty common. Not that it's okay, but
there's tons of generic electronics on Amazon that come with adapters with a
fake UL mark.

~~~
srtjstjsj
They are absolutely counterfeit. They don't need UL brand standards but are
represented as such.

------
bdowling
The products here may be considered legally counterfeit for one or more
reasons other than simply using the word mark APPLE. For example: (1)
trademark or trade dress infringement if the product's decorative features
(color, etc.) or packaging copies a registered trademark of Apple, (2)
copyright infringement if the product contains copied Apple code without a
license,(3) patent infringement if the product implements some patented Apple
technology without a license, (4) design patent infringement if the product is
a copy of an Apple-patented ornamental design, or (5) some other copied
intellectual property.

~~~
himinlomax
It's reasonable to think that One Plus could be found to be infringing on
Apple's trademarks or design patents, but that would have to be decided in
court. It's rather strange that customs could decide that some product clearly
labelled with one trademark (and an established one at that) are counterfeits
of another.

~~~
0xdeadb00f
> that would have to be decided in court

Apparently not. A lot of stuff doesn't need to be decided in court when you're
in an airport - it's a legal grey area (or so I've heard).

Border protection can pretty much do whatever they want in the name of
national security and get away with it.

------
x87678r
OnePlus official reply to CBP tweet. Hey, give those back! Upside-down face.
[https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305366058501509121](https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305366058501509121)

~~~
canada_dry
Yah, what's with the 1+ logo on the package?? They just came out with their
new wireless headphone a couple months ago.

Edit: saw others comments re: possibly at Apple's behest due to perceived
infringement. Though I'm sure we'd have read about that before now.

------
pja
2 days before, the CBD confiscated a pile of real "fake airpods":
[https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-
seizes-...](https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-seizes-
over-650k-fake-apple-wireless-earphones-charging-cables-lalb) so this is
clearly a thing.

Unfortunately OnePlus have got caught in the crossfire.

~~~
hatsunearu
Heck, there are fake AirPods in every store ever, go to Walmart (tall order
with the pandemic) and you can see fake AirPods in the checkout shelf... lol

~~~
mattacular
Aren't those just knockoffs rather than fakes being passed off as brand name
Apple AirPods?

~~~
hatsunearu
They are, but I'm assuming customs seize shit that "looks like" brand name
goods while claiming they are totally not pretending to be.

If that's the case, I'll take a hundred Totally-Not-Yeezys please

------
anigbrowl
[https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305366058501509121](https://twitter.com/OnePlus_USA/status/1305366058501509121)

------
mikl
To be fair, OnePlus Buds appear to be counterfeit AirPods in everything but
the name. Same shape, same white plastic, same metal endcaps, same black dots,
even the same case design.

In other words, a straight-up rip-off of Apple’s design with a few minor
changes.

~~~
Aperocky
The phone your holding has the same screen in the front, camera on the back, a
home button, and the keyboard shows up on the bottom when you're typing. Maybe
even the same front camera design.

All of that is just straight-up rip-off of.. everyone's phone?

~~~
mikl
The smart-phone form factor is largely determined by the rectangular screen,
and for the cameras to be useful, they have to be on the back and/or front.

The keyboards are very different in design between Google and Apple, and many
phones don’t have home buttons. Some even have more buttons.

Conversely, there’s nothing about ear-buds that force you to use white plastic
with black grills for the holes, EarPod-style stems, or metal tips on said
stems, nor a white round-rect pill box to store the things in.

The lazy OnePlus people _chose_ to copy those features, making their product
look like Apple’s.

~~~
owenversteeg
The stems come from the antennae required for a solid connection, IIRC
approximately 30mm long. The OnePlus buds are available in a number of colors.
Metal tips on said stems is also a design decision to allow charging by
slotting them into the container. The form factor of the container follows
from the design of the stems.

------
rob74
Interesting... apparently it qualifies as a counterfeit even though it doesn't
say Apple anywhere on the box? Or is the image caption wrong - maybe they're
counteirfeit OnePlus earbuds?

Oh BTW, it's "seize", not "sieze" :)

------
np-
I am no CBP fan either, but has anyone considered the case that these are
counterfeit AirPods in counterfeit OnePlus earbud boxes? If you look at the
opened box picture in the CBP memo, you will notice the earbuds do NOT match
the picture on the OnePlus box and look much much more similar to actual
AirPods.

~~~
scott_s
I did a double-take based on your comment, but after looking closely at the
CBP pictures, and the pictures in this review [1], I think they are likely to
be OnePlus pods.

The thing that caught me (and maybe you) is that the OnePlus pods have a flat
part, and the CBP pictures have no flat part. But looking at the pictures from
the review, the flat part is the end of the stem, and then the bulbous round
part that goes in the ear is attached to the stem, with the flat part on the
other side. The CBP pictures may have the flat part facing away from the
camera.

I had to look at several of the pictures in the review which showed two pods
next to each other to build a mental model of their shape.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/21331910/oneplus-buds-wireless-
earb...](https://www.theverge.com/21331910/oneplus-buds-wireless-earbuds-
review-price-design-sound)

~~~
np-
Good call. You’re totally correct, I was thinking about it from the wrong
angle.

------
romwell
What's next, seizing Surfaces as "counterfeit iPads"?

What a sad state of things.

~~~
smnrchrds
[https://bonkersworld.net/obvious-
similarities](https://bonkersworld.net/obvious-similarities)

------
illustriousbear
Perhaps this is linked to the China and US trade war?

Maybe US customs have been instructed to be harsher on Chinese company
imports?

Not saying it is necessarily unethical considering that China is no doubt
doing similar.

~~~
altacc
I'd be more tempted to apply Hanlon's razor: Don't attribute to malice that
which can be explained by stupidity.

~~~
illustriousbear
Thats fair, it just crossed my mind as a possibility given the current
climate.

~~~
zachrose
Also sometimes stupidity and malice amplify each other.

------
Semaphor
Sidebar: Why has the AirPod design become so ubiquitous? I always thought they
were the ugliest earbuds since earbuds became small. Is there some technical
reason they have this design? Or do people actually like it? Or is it simply
the Apple effect?

~~~
perryizgr8
1\. Apple removed the headphone jack. 2\. Apple stopped giving out dongles in
the box. 3\. Apple limited others' ability to compete by including proprietary
chips in iphone and airpods. 4\. Apple marketed airpods as a status symbol.
5\. People bought into the hype.

Objectively, airpods are the worst wireless earbuds in the market on every
single metric, but still command a premium price.

~~~
rimliu

       Objectively, airpods are the worst wireless earbuds in
       the market on every single metric, but still command a
       premium price. 
    

May be a good time too look up that the word "objectively" means.

~~~
perryizgr8
I am not a native speaker, but I do feel my comment was accurate. For the
price of an airpod, you can get other brand earbuds that are better in every
metric relevant to an earphone.

------
projektfu
If they have an identical shape to AirPods, they could run afoul of a design
patent. But they look different to me.

That’s still not “counterfeiting”. The difference between counterfeits and
knock-offs (KERFs) is consumers will help you fight counterfeiting and will go
out of their way to buy knock-offs.

------
duxup
Hard to be counterfeit if you don't claim to be the thing....

------
villgax
Wow, & what exactly is the objective of boasting such dumb claims on social
media for a govt body?

~~~
topkai22
US Government bodies do a lot of public outreach, many have twitter/social
media accounts as part of that effort. There are many reasons for this- the
aforementioned help at budget time, Government officials geniunely want to be
seen and celebrated as doing a good job, and a surprising amount of belief
that the American people should see what "their" government is doing.

The interplay with that last point (belief in transparency) interacts with
institutional secrecy in weird and hillarious ways. I remember one project I
worked on was shrouded in secracy to the individual teams working on it until
a news program showed up and talked to the public affairs office and senior
leadership. After watching the broadcast, we all of sudden understood what the
heck it was we were working on!

------
pacamara619
> It can be hard to tell a difference between AirPods and some earbuds that
> resemble them, but checking the box is always a good start.

Seems to me this is very related to a classic RTFM.

------
trboyden
So what exactly is the difference between those and the ones Amazon
[https://www.amazon.com/OnePlus-Buds-Wireless-Earbuds-
Chargin...](https://www.amazon.com/OnePlus-Buds-Wireless-Earbuds-
Charging/dp/B08CVMXPGY) says I can get tomorrow for $79?

~~~
scrollaway
The implication seems to be that they're genuine OnePlus earbuds, and CBP
thinks they're airpods. The two models do look a lot alike.

It'd be like CBP seizing a bunch of Samsung Galaxy phones, claiming they saved
the USA from counterfeit iphones.

I really hope I'm missing something.

~~~
true_religion
Apple originally claimed that the Samsung Galaxy phones were a direct
counterfiet of their work. They sued, and Samsung made changes.

OnePlus buds are a new product (I think released in 2020). It's probably just
an honest mistake by the CBP, but it could also be they have some official
direction to seize these OnePlus products either because Apple considers them
to be infringing, or the Feds are acting as part of the broader trade-war.

------
sneak
They also claimed that the lightning cables were fake, when they looked quite
real:

[https://twitter.com/sneakdotberlin/status/130491195246486732...](https://twitter.com/sneakdotberlin/status/1304911952464867328)

This is the same portion of the US government that runs the concentration
camps in Texas (and has endlessly harassed me personally for exercising basic
human rights), so I’m not that surprised that they remain dumb as rocks.

They also recently expelled 8800 unaccompanied children(!):

[https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-
world/about-8800-unaccompan...](https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-
world/about-8800-unaccompanied-children-are-expelled-at-us-border/)

------
OldHand2018
I think it's highly likely that the shipping manifest said Apple AirPods on it
in an attempt to avoid importation tariffs.

This stupid business of implementing tariffs and then giving specific
companies exemptions is not exactly fair, but its also not the fault of CBP.

------
082349872349872
I wonder which lawyer will seize on this announcement as evidence of
genericisation?

------
wyldfire
What if they're counterfeit OnePlus products and somehow the message to be
released to the public was lost in a 'telephone' game? Brand name dilution can
cause some less tech-astute folks to refer to earbuds by the popular AirPods
brand name. And given the visual similarity it's easy to see how this kinda
thing could cascade from a miscommunication like that.

That said it's also pretty believable that CBP thought they were intercepting
clearly marked OnePlus goods as infringing on Apple's trademarks....somehow...

~~~
monocasa
The CBP tweet says they're seizing them for not being Apple.

~~~
andrewflnr
They used an actual fscking apple emoji in the tweet, which I hate almost as
much as the kafkaesque injustice.

------
JCharante
They look so similar to the Huawei Freebuds 3 sitting in my desk, except that
the top cap is also round.

Edit: it appears that the OnePlus buds are also fully round

------
nightcracker
So this is just theft by the government in open daylight, right?

~~~
unixhero
I for one, cannot get over this:
[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=tsa+lot+of&_trksid=p233...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=tsa+lot+of&_trksid=p2332490.m4084.l1313)

Pretty much theft and resale.

~~~
steerablesafe
What is the TSA supposed to do with these other than auctioning them off?

~~~
jstanley
If they consider them to be safe enough that it is not unethical to sell them
in job lots to members of the general public, maybe they shouldn't be seizing
them in the first place?

~~~
pdpi
Context matters. I don’t see a problem with a job lot of chef’s knives, but I
definitely wouldn’t want somebody to carry one as cabin luggage

~~~
nybble41
Before the change in policy you could choose to have the items moved to
checked baggage, or packaged and shipped separately. Seizing the items is not
the only alternative to letting them into the cabin.

------
IdoRA
This is probably a combination of a Section 337 investigation by the USITC
that includes OnePlus in its scope and directs CBP to seize certain OnePlus
goods, a bombastic press release from CBP, and The Verge reporter not being
insightful and generating clickbait.

[https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/2019/er0926ll1...](https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/2019/er0926ll1167.htm)

~~~
xvector
The Verge’s quality has tanked so hard over the last few years. What happened?

~~~
Causality1
I'd be interested in a writeup of that as well. The cavalcade of stupidity and
maliciousness that was the Verge PC Build debacle leads me to think some quite
bad stuff has been going on behind the scenes.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
I think that was more a case of "we need a PC build video, they're trending
right now... _...hey Josh, you know about computers, right?_ "

IMO, they should've done more due diligence first to avoid teeing off the
super-elitist subset of enthusiast people

~~~
Causality1
You need to be an elitist to object to someone building a PC in a way that
doesn't work and voids warranties and then fixing it during jump-cuts without
telling the viewer? You need to be an elitist to take issue with the Verge
using takedown notices to attack everyone who pointed out their failures?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I was not aware of the takedown notices but I watched a couple of the
“response” videos and they came across as extremely malicious/toxic. I can see
why The Verge would want to do everything in their power to counter that.
There are better ways to criticize something.

~~~
Causality1
Pretending to be an expert at something while giving people advice that is not
only wrong but dangerous makes you fair game for absolutely any and all
criticism.

------
zaptheimpaler
They do look like Airpods from the picture, not OnePlus - i dont see the
chrome/metal disc on the back of the earbuds that OnePlus pods have. The case
matches the OnePlus case though. So its possible they really are counterfeit.
Admittedly the picture is very low-res so its hard to be sure.

------
fullstop
Well this is just dumb, but it might be cheaper than any advertisement OnePlus
could have done to increase their brand recognition.

I have had a OnePlus3 and a OnePlus 7T, both of which were, and are still,
fantastic phones.

~~~
JshWright
My 7 Pro is a fantastic phone. My next phone will likely be OnePlus as well.

------
modzu
sums up my opinion of the bp

------
vmchale
CBP remains the worst law enforcement agency in the country

------
valtism
I just noticed a lot of suspiciously cheap AirPods show up on the Facebook
marketplace here in Sydney. I think that the shipments here didn't get seized.

------
xwdv
Maybe not counterfeit, but you still can’t argue this design is stolen pretty
much straight from Apple.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Right, just like how the iPhone design is stolen straight from the pocket PC.
/s

Apple doesn't own a product type just by using it.

~~~
watt
You think it's funny (the sarcasm), but Apple does go to court arging "look
and feel" is copyrightable.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_feel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_feel)

------
cheph
Not sure I understand how this is newsworthy exactly, people make mistakes
(even those on HN) and there is due process and recourse for whoever was
impacted by this mistake.

If the implication is that if law enforcement make mistakes they cannot be
legitimate then I think we should just give up on the idea, but I guess this
is more or less what is being advocated for, so maybe it can be stated more
directly.

~~~
orf
I guess it’s the fact that they proudly declared the seizure which was
obviously a complete fail at even the briefest glance at the pictures they
provided.

It’s funny and newsworthy.

