US Judge Dismisses Part of Alibaba Counterfeit Goods Lawsuit (reuters.com)

Reuters reports: A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed part of a lawsuit filed last year by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and other luxury brands accusing Alibaba Group Holding Ltd of promoting the sale of counterfeit goods. U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel in Manhattan dismissed racketeering claims asserted by brands owned by Paris-based Kering SA, saying their complaint failed to allege facts that could sustain those claims.Alibaba is not the only company which has been subjected to such accusations. Amazon has been treading the same path, with some sellers even leaving the platform.

Comments

He should have dropped the whole shit

[Opportunist]

I mean, after all it's likely that they came from the same sweatshop that make the "real" ones...

Legos

[110010001000]

Alibaba is the best place to buy Legos, I mean building blocks, if you have a kid. They are reasonably priced. Lego sets shouldn't cost $80+. Plus they sell minifigures separately.

"Counterfeit"

[jdavidb]

I really appreciate businesses who sell "counterfeit" goods, or as I like to call them "knock offs." They are usually much more affordable but still serviceable versions of the expensive product somebody else wants me to buy. As long as there's no lying (fraud) going on, I don't think they should get to use the force of law to take away my choice to buy what I want from people who are willing to sell it.

The fact is that some folks want to charge more for their product and competition from cheaper competitors makes that more difficult.

As for "counterfeiting," the US government just keeps creating more and more dollars, so I'm not sure they should sit in judgment of anyone for something called "counterfeiting." Somehow this is a bad thing if a private citizen does it but a great thing for government to do, by their logic. Seems like the same story: they don't want anyone cutting in on their profits.

Re:"Counterfeit"

[imidan]

I've had the experience on Amazon of buying a product that I was already familiar with from purchasing in a bricks-and-mortar store. I was buying another one as a gift. It was presented on Amazon as being genuine merchandise from the original manufacturer. When it arrived, it was a cheap plastic knockoff that, while functional, was obviously manufactured using different and less material for cost savings and had been through an inferior QA process, so there were a number of pieces that had manufacturing defects. This was not a case of the factory just running more production than the product owner requested. The cost was pretty close to what I had paid in the store, so it wasn't like I was getting a great deal.

If I had been aware that I was buying a knockoff, I could have taken that into consideration. If I was buying this thing for careless children, a knockoff would have been fine. But these dishonest sellers are portraying their products as the real thing, which can damage the reputation of the original company and of legitimate sellers (who get placed into a pool on Amazon when they advertise that they are selling the same product), leads to dissatisfied buyers and poor product reviews, and causes a hassle when the buyer has to go through the process of returning the item as counterfeit.

In another example, there's a seller on Amazon who manufactures and sells a certain kind of high-quality cotton bed sheets. They're having problems with bad product reviews because unscrupulous sellers piggyback on their product description and then ship people crappy polyester sheets. They had great reviews for their first few months of business, and apparently the scammers saw this and decided to get in on it, and the product reviews started plummeting. Also, the scammers become the default sellers of the product because they undercut the legitimate seller on price. This is a relatively small business that's being stunted by junk peddlers, and Amazon is willing to do very little about it. It's up to the consumer to parse the product page and make sure they're picking the correct seller.