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Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse (cnbc.com)
A report on CNBC, citing sellers, says that counterfeit problem on the platform has gotten worse after it made it easier for Chinese manufacturers to sell goods to U.S. consumers. The report gives an example of a seller Jamie Whaley who started a bedding business on Amazon that reached $700,000 in annual sales within three years. Her patented product called BedBand consists of a set of shock cords, clamps and locks designed to keep fitted bed sheets in place. Whaley found quite an audience, selling up to 200 units a day for $13.99 a set. BedBand climbed into the top 200 selling products in the home and kitchen category. That was 2013. By mid-2015, the business was in a tailspin. Revenue plummeted by half and Whaley was forced to lay off eight employees. Her sheet fastener had been copied by a legion of mostly Chinese knockoffs that undercut BedBand on price and jumped the seller ranks by obtaining scores of reviews that watchdog site Fakespot.com determined were inauthentic and "harmful for real consumers." The report adds:Spend any time surveying Amazon sellers and Whaley's narrative will start sounding like the norm. In Amazon's quest to be the low-cost provider of everything on the planet, the website has morphed into the world's largest flea market -- a chaotic, somewhat lawless, bazaar with unlimited inventory. Always a problem, the counterfeiting issue has exploded this year, sellers say, following Amazon's effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers, weaving them intimately into the company's expansive logistics operation. Merchants are perpetually unsure of who or what may kill their sales on any given day and how much time they'll have to spend hunting down fakers.
You mean Weber grills, who were sued for putting Chinese parts in a made-in-USA grill?
Don't kid yourself. I just bought a barbecue recently, and after some research discovered pretty much all bbq manufacturers use China to manufacture, even the $1k+ grilles (I looked at Jackson, Weber, and Broil King grilles.) So I said screw it, if I'm going to get one from China anyway I'm not spending $1000 on one, and found a Char-Broil one for $400.
TFA states her product is patented, in which case it really is about counterfeiting.
She has a patent on a specific aspect of her product, not on the basic concept of an elastic sheet tightener (which have been available for many decades). TFA does NOT claim that her patent is being infringed, nor are her competitors using her brand name. This is just good old-fashioned competition, and she doesn't like it.
If patents did not exist, then why would they ever be illegal (outside of safety violations)?
Counterfeiting is not about patents, it is about trademarked brands. Brands are an indicator of quality, and it is, and should be, illegal for one manufacturer to impersonate another.
Note: TFA does not claim that either trademarks or patents are being infringed. Just that competitors are making similar products and selling them for less. But (and this is the important part) they are Chinese, so therefore we should be outraged.
Because it's a band for a fucking bed.
That's not really a trademark, it's a generic term that's likely to be challenged as a trademark even in the territories that have (stupidly) allowed it.
It's like complaining that if you go searching for "sticky tape" that you get things that aren't your genuine, registered trademark "StickyTape®" sticky tapes.
If you'd called your company "Joe's Shitty Products®" and someone sniped all your "Joe's Shitty Product® Sheet Fastener's", yeah, sure you have a case. But "bed band" is a description of exactly what the product is, using two generic and common English words related to that product. That's NOT what you should be trademarking.
If you want to protect a trademark you combine it with a company name that's pretty unique and which you own the trademarks in your territories and industry sectors for.
But trademarking TennisBall tennis balls is a) likely to not be allowed in the first place, b) likely to be struck down for genericity at any time and c) stupid because I don't have to be specifically sniping your trademark to have a website that scores high for searches of tennis balls that aren't TennisBall tennis balls.
BedBands is, quite honestly, one of the worst product names that I've seen. And one of the worst products that I've seen. I could make it myself, make something better, I've bought better things that do the same job, copy it in about ten minutes, and I could market it as the "best bed band product" without infringing on BedBands trademarks unfairly. Because it's a fucking band for a fucking bed.
And, to be honest, that "sit on the corner of the sheet" shite will last two seconds until I rip it off when I roll over. Most of the bed bands that actually work do so by tying the left of the sheet to the right of the sheet under the mattress, not just the corners.
I hope their blatant and unnecessary slashvertisement just waters down their trademarks even more.
This rant is trademarked by me. Nobody else can have an InternetRant internet rant but me, now.