Equipment bag with the Salvatore Ferragamo brand of the Singapore airline
SFO Museum
Several third-party sellers allegedly announced and facilitated the sale of counterfeit Salvatore Ferragamo products to Amazon, according to two joint lawsuits that Amazon and the Italian luxury label filed Thursday.
The lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court by the Western District of Washington accuse four sellers and three companies of using Amazon to transmit counterfeit belts that featured Ferragamo design and brand elements. The two allegations include other unnamed defendants, christened “1-10.”
The four external vendors designated in the lawsuits are Zhao Hao Jun, of China; Zhang Lianfa of China; Li Yong; and Wu Pianpian. Zhao and Zhang did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Li and Wu could not be located for comment.
The cases represent Amazon’s latest effort to prevent the sale of counterfeits in its extensive third-party market. The market now accounts for more than half of Amazon’s ecommerce sales and has helped the company make record revenue. But it has also proven to house counterfeit, unsafe and even expired products, prompting the company to invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year to ensure the products are safe and compliant.
Amazon has sued counterfeiters in court and deployed several programs to search for and detect sales of counterfeit products. Last June he launched the Counterfeiting Crimes Unit, made up of former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts, to exploit the site for fraudulent activity.
Counterfeit products can be particularly detrimental to credible brands selling on Amazon, as they eliminate businesses and can force companies that already survive on low margins to further lower their prices to compete. Amazon, which launched a section dedicated to the luxury of its site last September, has an incentive to protect its relationships with brands to ensure they continue to offer their products on the platform.
Amazon and Ferragamo filed two separate lawsuits against the alleged counterfeiters, but the activities alleged in the allegations are of a similar nature. In both complaints, Amazon and Ferragamo say they confirmed the items were counterfeits by buying a series. When the items arrived, they displayed the Ferragamo brand with trademarks. Amazon said it closed accounts after discovering they were selling fakes.
Amazon and Italian luxury brand Salvatore Ferragamo filed two lawsuits against sellers and third-party companies alleging they were selling counterfeit belts.
In many cases, the listing pages of counterfeit products set aside “any mention of Ferragamo’s word mark in product descriptions,” which could evade Amazon’s counterfeit detection tools, according to a complaint.
In many cases, the listing pages of the counterfeit products set aside “any mention of the word mark Ferragamo in the product descriptions,” the claims allege.
In addition, several of the defendants took steps to conceal their identity and location by using fake names and contact information, as well as unregistered companies to operate on the platform, Amazon alleges.
Many of the sellers ’accounts offering counterfeit items appeared to be connected to each other, according to the two complaints. They used similar tactics to ensure that Amazon did not mark their ads, and in some cases, counterfeit Ferragamo items from various sellers would arrive in similar packaging, shipped from the same address, or were priced identically.
Amazon and Ferragamo are claiming unspecified damages from the defendants, as well as a ban by sellers and companies that prevents them from selling products on Amazon or any product that uses the Ferragamo brand.