Knockoffs are a huge problem plaguing online marketplaces like Amazon and to tackle such issues, the online retail giant had created a Counterfeit Crimes Unit in June last year. Now, the unit seems to have taken its first action.

Amazon and GoPro have sued seven Chinese nationals and a couple of businesses for distributing hard-to-detect knockoffs of its “Handler” floating camera handgrip and “3-way” tripod grip that uses GoPro’s own logo.

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The lawsuit was filed in April this year and has just been unsealed because a parallel investigation against the same sellers is ongoing in China. The lawsuit claims that some of the buyers were fooled by the fake products but it doesn’t reveal the number of people who actually bought these fake products.

As for taking action, Amazon says that it blocked the seller accounts of these defendants after counterfeits were brought to the company’s attention. The company also added that it sent samples of the products to GoPro to help the investigation.

Kebharu Smith, Director of Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit said, “When counterfeiters attempt to sell in our store, they not only violate the intellectual property rights of companies like GoPro, they also mislead consumers and harm Amazon’s reputation as a place to buy authentic goods.”

Amazon contends that the problem of counterfeit products on its platform isn’t widespread. It says that in 2020, less than 0.01 percent of all products sold on its marketplace were the subject of a counterfeit complaint from customers. But Amazon doesn’t reveal how many products it has on its storefront, so it’s impossible to tell how large “0.01%” might be.

The company is talking about counterfeit complaints filed by the customers so the number of such products on the platform could be much more given that not everyone can tell apart the fake goods and not everyone who finds out decides to complain about it.

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