[NathanKP]

Full disclosure I work for Amazon (on the web services side).

The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon, because what he is asking for is possible. It's called the Amazon Brand Registry. You can contact the infringment team using the details here and initiate the process of getting your brand / ASIN locked so that other people can't sell it without your permission: https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement

Also check this out: https://services.amazon.com/brand-registry.html

If you have a popular product then counterfeiters are unfortunately inevitable, but you do have options to fight back and stop them.

There is also Brand Gating which is a little harder to get. Look up ASIN or Brand Gating for information. Basically you can order the counterfeit product and report it to Amazon. It can cost a couple thousand in legal fees to register your brand and get all the paperwork unless you are capable of doing it all yourself, but it is possible.

[hop]

You really think the author of the post (me) doesn't communicate regularly with the Brand Registry team? Day 5 for them to do anything on this latest one.

[ikeboy]

>There is something extremely simple Amazon could do about it. If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale - there could be one box to check for that.

This isn't going to work because companies will lie their pants off to prevent distribution. I've personally had false IP complaints from multiple billion dollar companies, which are submitted under penalty of perjury, and I know of other companies that do the same.

What you should do is buy up their entire stock (it's FBA, and seems like not a lot of stock) and file not as described complaints with notice@amazon and also cc seller performance, then return as wrong item.

[alok-g]

Have you looked at Amazon Transparency as yet?

https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-grows-transparency-prog...

[NathanKP]

Hmm what about brand gating then? Have you been able to try that out?

[hop]

Almost everytime we contact them, we ask them to lock our products down. It's a mystery how sellers get Brand Gating, but there is plenty in the forums about it. That's part of the reason this was written, hopefully someone there can do something about it.

[stryk]

Hey man, this is a bit off-topic for this thread, but I have to mention that I got one of the Elevation Lab Anchor under-desk mounts when they were on sell for like 10 bucks a week or so ago. It's great, it works better than I was expecting (my main concern was the longevity of the adhesive, but I did some research into the 3M VHB and it's legit!)

Now for the part that's not off topic: to remind myself how long ago I bought it, I just clicked on the product link from my order confirmation e-mail from Amazon. I landed at a listing for the product, but "Sold by suiningdonghanjiaju Co Ltd" (not making the name up). That's not right I know for a fact that when I placed the order it was listed properly as "Sold by Elevation Lab". I just clicked around some more and eventually I got to the listing that is "sold by Elevation Lab" but both of those pages have the gray 'you bought this item on...' box at the top. That seems.... off that doesn't pass the sniff test.

[8ytecoder]

For Amazon it's the same product from different sellers. And hence the confusion to the customer when there is fake counterfeit products mixed up.

[sabalaba]

Since you work on the web services side it's forgivable that you would think that link to reporting infringement is an effective solution / something that Amazon pays close attention to. We've sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product on Amazon, found a company selling a counterfeit version of our product, and submitted a complaint to that URL. That was on 4/5/2016. We have yet to receive a response. The only solution we had was to call up the infringer and tell them to stop, which they luckily did.

But, as I said, from the outside, that report link does seem like a viable "option to fight back"; in reality, it's a customer support black hole.

[NathanKP]

Gotcha. Yeah I don't sell on Amazon myself or work on the retail side so I can't speak to the effectiveness on that side. It sounds like something they need to improve upon.

Have you looked up Brand Gating too? My (admittedly limited) understanding is that Brand Registry is step #1 and Brand Gating is the next level beyond that: https://www.helium10.com/blog/selling-on-amazon/brand-gating...

[sabalaba]

Yes, we looked into Brand Registry -- this is my first time seeing the Brand Gating, which looks like it would solve this problem. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

In general, I think there's frustration for smaller companies and brands that Amazon (understandably) doesn't retain resources to support individually.

[cepth]

From my own experiences, and the various answers available on Amazon forums, Brand Gating is a black box. There is no one you can talk to in order to request it, and for now it seems to be an invite-only program.

Somewhat perversely, someone claimed on the forums (I’ll try to add the link if I find the topic), that one way to get brand gated is to buy up the counterfeit products being sold under your listing/ASIN, and document and/or send them into Amazon. It seems that until you’re being widely counterfeited, there really is nothing you can do proactively.

Amazon has been an overall net positive for our company, but the difficulties of trying to get a knowledgeable person to answer pressing questions usually create headaches for me at least once a month. Even as a large volume seller through Amazon Vendor Central, we’ve been given boilerplate legalese about needing to provide photocopies of the certificate of our trademarks in order to initiate DMCA takedowns of stolen or copied images and text. As great as Amazon is for consumers, the vendor support can often make you feel like you’re howling at the wind.

[bryanrasmussen]

why do you need to provide photocopies to initiate DMCA takedowns? I thought one of the complaints about DMCA was that it was ridiculously easy to do to someone, but Amazon has made it difficult for you? I wonder if it would be easier for someone not selling through Amazon and thus not dependent on them.

[cepth]

You'd think this would be an unnecessary step, since we provided a link to the USPTO filing, and we provided our incorporation documents when becoming a vendor.

The issue with the Amazon case management system is if you encounter a customer service rep who has no idea who you're talking about, there's no way to escalate the support case at all. There's no live person to talk to. So, you end up playing roulette, often having to submit the same case multiple times until you get a rep who is able to help.

[8note]

I recently got reorged into brand protection.

you can probably get somewhere by messaging [e-mail]

[asdfasdf1233]

There are tons of new tools for brands that were launched in 2017 to help brands proactively prevent this sort of behavior.

Apply to the brand registry with your trademark info and you’ll have access to tools to proactively protect your brand.

Amazon is taking this sort of behavior very seriously and has added systems in place to help prevent this.

In addition to the brand registry you might also want to check out their transparency program.

https://digiday.com/marketing/amazon-grows-transparency-prog...

[masonic]

Is anyone else disturbed that somebody would create a throwaway account just to defend Amazon practices in this submittal's comments?

[mackey]

No. Despite it being a defense, sometimes its not worth shining a light on yourself or maybe they just don't feel comfortable speaking out.

[amluto]

I wonder what would have happened if you filed a lawsuit against Amazon?

[double0jimb0]

Great question! Answer is, you have to have a legal team the size of Mercedes Benz:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/12/05/amazon-g...

[prepend]

Why is Amazon not actively seeking out patterns of counterfeiters and suggesting this to sellers.

Just doing simple image machine learning should get 90% of scammers.

He AWS team is great about this. Looking for abnormalities. Looking for posted AWS keys. Proactively. The retail guys need to get some of the cloud guy smarts. Or ethics. Either/or will help stop this.

I don’t sell, but I can barely buy from amazon because of all the scam copies and fake reviews.

[elefanten]

I second this strongly. Have basically stopped shopping from Amazon entirely.

Haven't ever read a single word from Amazon to reassure me (as a buyer) about counterfeits. At least nothing beyond completely cookie cutter PR stuff that my brain just dismisses.

Let's see some stats. Let's see some action plans. Let's get all these sellers' horror stories out of my various feeds. Where's all that?

[discoursism]

> Let's see some stats. Let's see some action plans. Let's get all these sellers' horror stories out of my various feeds. Where's all that?

Not sure if you're aware, but Amazon's doing pretty OK by all publicly available signs. To the extent what's bothering you is even a real issue, it's not bothering anyone else enough to stop them shopping on Amazon. I doubt Amazon feels much pressure to post action plans to satisfy the tiny minority of people who have strong opinions about this issue.

[prepend]

Ultimately this harms them. People said the same thing about Comcast sucking for years. It’s finally starting to catch up with them and will take decades to go out of business.

See also other shitty companies that made money.

[discoursism]

https://www.google.com/search?q=comcast&safe=off&rlz=1C1CHBF...

? I mean it may be true that they will some day go out of business. In fact it's all but certain. But I don't think you could really say it's because of effect that is visible today.

[ebrewste]

You are right that Amazon clearly does not feel pressure to satisfy the tiny majority that care about Amazon selling counterfeit goods.

[btgeekboy]

I see this sort of complaint ("I can barely buy from Amazon because of all the scam copies and fake reviews") somewhat often online, and I don't understand. I've placed 15 orders in 2018 so far (76 in 2017), and I've yet to find a detectable fake. (One of those things was even a printer toner cartridge, which I halfway expected to be fake given the stories you hear.)

What are people buying and receiving fakes of?

[yoz-y]

Anything and everything probably, it can be seen even in reviews. I was looking up some gloves and often the reviews are split 50/50 between great and complete garbage. I assume that the unlucky half got counterfeits. Recently I have bought some plastic plates to put under a flower pot. The dimensions were completely wrong: as in, the advertised plate was for a pot of 22 cm in diameter and this was even printed twice on the plate itself - it was not even 18cm large. This was on a product with over 4.5 star average.

I still buy stuff on amazon because returns are very simple, but I got into habit of immediately returning anything which is not good enough. I feel that most of the stuff one can buy there is garbage.

[astura]

Everything! I mean everything! There's fakes of literally everything. Including items you wouldn't think would be profitable to fake.

Books, CD, electronics, baby products, stationary, personal care products including condoms, toys,...

Take a look at this cup. Would you know if Amazon sent you a fake if it's your only Yeti cup? http://www.wideopenspaces.com/fake-yeti-ramblers-on-the-rise...

Many/Most of the time it's going to be difficult to tell unless you have the real version already and do side by side comparison.

[discoursism]

This is reminding me every PHB who ever said, "it'll just take a day or two." "It's just a little machine learning."

[prepend]

I agree in general, but literally all you have to do is reverse image search new product listings against existing products and then add a call out to manually review this. This isn’t even complicated stuff.

To get fancy you could compare against the millions of known frauds and apply that to new products.

The thing that bugs me is that they do nothing. This stupid “it’s all on you to register your brand and yadda yadda” would be cool if they also coupled that with a ton of effort and smarts to stamp out counterfeiters.

I mean they run mechanical Turk, they could just manually review shit.

They should keep a running log of how they think this is important and all the things they try.

[URSpider94]

You are missing the point. They are not creating a new product that is a copy of the original, they are registering with Amazon as a supplier of the genuine product, but shipping counterfeits into the warehouse. They are then pricing their counterfeits dynamically so that they always get the “buy box”.

There’s no machine learning to do. The only way to find the counterfeit is to inspect each shipment by hand vs a reference sample to determine if it’s legit.

[asdfasdf1233]

“The only way to find the counterfeit is to inspect each shipment by hand”

This is basically what the Amazon transparency program is. Is tracks each item from manufacturer all the way through to your door with unique code scanned along the way. You can use the app to see where it came from.

[xstartup]

This tells me why companies do not leave decisions on just developers. If we were in a company, someone had developed a machine learning app by now for a problem which needs no ML in the first place.

[prepend]

If an existing seller is listing the product that already exists. It can be examined against other listings and be reviewed. If it’s a brand new seller then interview the seller. It’s not perfect but will provide incremental improvement.

[URSpider94]

I think the point you’re missing is that the normal course of business for most products is that many distributors compete to sell the same item on Amazon. Go look for example at Canon cameras, you will see 10-15 different legitimate sellers all offering different prices, all on the same detail page - you have to click through to “this item available from xxx sellers”

If you’re interviewing sellers, what do you ask them in the interview? “Are you selling counterfeits?” What are your grounds for allowing them to list an item?

If you want to inspect a new listing, what do you want to inspect? Maybe you inspect the first shipment. Fine. People will figure that out and send a small first shipment of real items, then start sending fakes.

[sk5t]

If simple image matching is effective, scammers will just rotate/warp/tint their images. These techniques might also take the legs out from an MT approach. Sellers might also get a product online with one image, then later change to another/reorganize the album.

[hysan]

Wouldn't that be a good thing? Buyers will see those slightly off images and it will set off red flags.

[prepend]

Perhaps, but that’s harder than you think. Look at all the shit Getty does to find images that have alters, changes, stuff like that.

My point is that they aren’t doing anything. You point out a couple of edge conditions as a reason not to try. Even reducing fakes by 20% would be great.

If this cost Amazon money they would be trying to stop it.

[8note]

it's pretty cost effective for the counterfeiters to be mechanical Turks, or pay people to be mechanical Turks.

[scarface74]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

[asdfasdf1233]

Amazon is in fact searching for and proactively blocking counterfeiters by using image searching, machine learning, etc.

There are literally multiple teams with lots of software engineers working on these problems.

Currently entry into brand registry is a requirement for these programs. You would be shocked to see the head count and money Amazon is spending in this area, they are investing heavily.

[johndough]

Since you appear to be an actual person working at amazon and there doesn't seem to be a way to report mass scams, I would appreciate if you could delete all items with the keywords "18650" and "9800" or "9900".

"18650" is a type of lithium battery and capacities above 4000 mah are technically impossible.

Usually the batteries with lower rated capacities are fake, too, but at least this would get rid of the most blatant scams.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Da...

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Da...

There are also many examples of fake power banks, but those have varying form factors, so you'd have to calculate the volume or check the weight to make sure it is technically impossible.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3...

[nyolfen]

i'm glad to hear that, and i assume it comes from personal experience, but do you have links to any public information about it?

[megy]

> simple image machine learning

When did this become an acceptable statement?

[prepend]

A couple years ago.

[rspeer]

Do you understand that this would have to be something that works reliably, at scale, and can be debugged? The exciting blog posts you've read are not going to solve the whole problem.

[8note]

getting input data for counterfeiting is difficult. A good amount of bad actor behaviour is really easy to detect; customers will notice almost certainly notice if their package doesn't show up.

Counterfeits however, are difficult; somebody has to notice, and care that the thing is a counterfeit, and if this is the first time I'm buying one of these anchors, how am I to know how nice the seams are supposed to be? if it works, I'm happy.

To get around image section though, all you need is a real box of the thing. you can just buy a bunch of it and repackage, and sell the original separately.

(just for reference, the cloud guys are relying on us for a lot of their detection, not the other way around)

[jlg23]

> Why is Amazon not actively seeking out patterns of counterfeiters and suggesting this to sellers.

Why would any company spend money to decrease their revenue? I have yet to see one company that does not test the boundaries of the legally permissible to maximize profits.

[mc32]

Because it behooves them to be a trustworthy platform for sellers but specially for buyers.

As a buyer I want to know I can trust what I'm buying is what I believe I am buying --and sellers don't want their brands tarneshed. Once bitten twice shy.

[riknos314]

One of Amazon's leadership principles is Earn Trust

It's why their customer service has always been recognized as one of the best.

[Terretta]

Did you read your own link?

"We do not enforce ... Detail Page Ownership ... Exclusive or Selective Distribution."

As long as the counterfeit is good enough, don't bother complaining:

"Other sellers can list their items for sale against pages that you have created or added your copyrighted images to. However, we do require sellers to list only against detail pages that exactly match their items. If you believe sellers are listing against detail pages that do not exactly match their items, we ask that you report the violation directly by using the contact us form."

Why do the counterfeiters get to use your own picture of your own product? Because Amazon claims the rights from you:

"Additionally, when you add your copyrighted image to a detail page, you grant Amazon and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to exercise all rights of publicity over the material."

And that brand registry? Does it mean your brand is yours? No, it's just 'increased authority' ...

"increased authority over product listings with your brand name"

[amluto]

> Why do the counterfeiters get to use your own picture of your own product? Because Amazon claims the rights from you: > > "Additionally, when you add your copyrighted image to a detail page, you grant Amazon and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to exercise all rights of publicity over the material."

IANAL, but that sounds very thin. Maybe it would hold up under copyright law, but that seems dubious. What if the party agreeing to that contract doesn't have that right in the first place? But all this ignores trademark law. If that image contains a trademark and the trademark is used improperly, then the cause of action that the trademark owner has seems like it would have nothing to do with "publicity".

[compiler-guy]

And then your tiny business can initiate a trademark action against a multi billion dollar company with more lawyers dedicated to defending trademark actions than you have entire employees.

A remedy that is impossible to get in practice is no remedy at all.

[NathanKP]

Brand Registry is the first step to applying for brand gating which does stop other people from selling your ASIN on Amazon: https://www.helium10.com/blog/selling-on-amazon/brand-gating...

[Terretta]

This should be the default.

"Suzi Hixon - Private Label Lawyer - Providing strategic business and legal guidance for the proactive protection and enforcement of your Amazon listings and private label brands."

How bad must be the Amazon problem be that there's an industry dedicated to trying to deal with it?

[ikeboy]

This is wrong. A counterfeit is technically a trademark violation and you can file a complaint for that.

If you sell on Amazon and also sell elsewhere and someone got their hands on a legitimate item, they can sell using your images.

[amluto]

Amazon's approach here is, IMO, both BS and odd-seeming from a business perspective.

Once upon a time, I could go to amazon.com and buy things from Amazon. I trusted Amazon to sell legit goods. But now if I go to amazon.com, it's bizarrely difficult to buy from Amazon, and a large fraction of the goods sold seem to be junk. And Amazon presumably made considerably more money selling things that they sourced themselves.

So why doesn't Amazon go back closer to their original model? I wouldn't mind seeing a strong built-in preference for genuine Amazon listings and a very clear indication that I'm about to order from some random-ass seller.

(Also, I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been a giant trademark infringement and/or copyright infringement lawsuit against Amazon? Amazon.com de facto sells all kinds of counterfeit goods. I wouldn't be surprised if a judge wouldn't let them hide behind the "it wasn't us -- it was a third party" defense.)

[Noos]

They make more money getting a cut from people who do take the risk of selling online. This is probably the biggest contribution/problem of the modern web economy; it offshores risk and effort onto others and just provides venues and processing. No one wants to open a store, they want to be mall owners, but with barely any real upkeep for the mall.

[none_to_remain]

Amazon doesn't want to be in the retail business, they want to be in the logistics business.

[shanghaiaway]

Amazon is and wants to be in the retail business.

[astura]

They make more money being a platform and logics company thank they do being a retailer.

[chaostheory]

Is filtering products to only sold by Amazon not safe anymore?

[throwawaylalala]

Nathan, we own a Brand that's in Brand registry, don't wholesale, and hold trademarks on the unique products. Guess what? We still get people on the brand. We're told that others can't list on it (at least as new), but it still happens. It's a nightmare.

[Lazare]

Your post comes off as quite condescending to me.

> The author of this article clearly doesn't know much about selling on Amazon

Or alternatively, maybe they know more than you do? Especially since the core of your advice is "use the Brand Registry" which the post already mentioned and which, according to your own link doesn't even do what you claim?

[lostapathy]

I have actually worked with people to pursue this and we got nowhere. The counterfeits just came online under a fake upc and amazon wouldn’t take any more action.

We gave up and just tell customers anything with our brand on amazon is a fake.

[Scaevolus]

All you have to do is make another listing under a similar name, buy some fake reviews to pump it up, and sell it for cheaper than the real one.

[ciscoriordan]

It’s not a simple as you make it out to be. Amazon launched a new Brand Registry last year and all the companies in the previous version were dumped and told to re-apply.

Source: I’m a seller on Amazon and I actually bought one of these counterfeit headphone holders.

[bambax]

This is quite a ridiculous comment, which, sorry, isn’t surprising coming from an Amazon employee.

I too sell on Amazon, and I registered my brand with Amazon. I also have a design patent for the main object I’m selling.

Direct counterfeits can get blocked, although you have to send an email to each marketplace (I’m in Europe), and then Amazon stops the sales but doesn’t remove the listing.

But listing hijacking is hard/impossible to get rid of. I have a hijacker who sells a different product (different shape, material, color, and quantities) who’s been sitting on my listing for over 2 weeks, and Amazon won’t do anything about it. « Seller performance » wrtites back canned emails saying that they don’t communicate the result of their investigations... one doubts there’s much investigation going on.

Brand registry is absolutely useless.

The main problem is, Amazon thinks about its marketplace as something where multiple sellers compete on price selling the same items. It doesn’t want unique listing for unique products by unique sellers/manufacturers. It doesn’t like the idea, and it will never spend ressources to enforce it.

[bambax]

> which, sorry, isn’t surprising coming from an Amazon employee

This is in fact a little unfair (can't edit anymore so I reply to myself). In my experience Amazon employees are very courteous and want to help; the problem is, they usually don't know how the system works and can only read back policies (that are otherwise available to anyone -- we can read!)

Maybe it's just a lack of training (not their fault), or maybe nobody really knows how all the parts of the system work together. Anyway it's incredibly difficult to get a clear answer.

And seller performance is the worst, because they never answer or do any follow-up.

[eloff]

Please, please, please try to communicate to the people you work with how important this is. I've lost all confidence in buying electronics from Amazon. I'd rather shop at walmart and bestbuy because I'm more certain I will get what I order.

[mapgrep]

You didn’t even read his post before replying. He specifically mentions Brand Registry.

Sad to see this poor level of attention to a well written customer complaint from Amazon.

[CamelCaseName]

Although i agree with the sentiment, Hop makes one mistake in this article. She claims that inventory is returned when deemed counterfeit.

This is often false. Counterfeit merchandise "may be destroyed" according to Amazon's help docs, and often is, from my experience.

[kcanini]

The author specifically talks about Brand Registry and why it doesn't solve this problem. Did you read the article?

[gkanai]

Instead of shaming the OP for ignorance, you should be contacting the OP and providing this information before it ever got to the point that this blog post was needed. The shame should be on Amazon's side.

[ryantgtg]

A little over a year ago I listed some garments from my girlfriend's clothing line. Unless someone broke into our garage and stole the stock, then no one else could ever sell these products. I created the listings, did the brand registry, and we still were not able to get the Buy button on the listings. Something about not being an established seller, and that other sellers might come in and offer the same product. If that wasn't dumb enough, we also weren't allowed to buy advertising for three months. So amazon wanted us to just kick back for three months, paying the seller fee on products that no one will find and that don't have a buy button.

So, I completely agree with the headline of this article. The whole listing process was catered to listing existing products, and the policies did not make sense for sellers who completely control their product.

[strathmeyer]

My experience is that the brand registry is used by manufacturers to prevent others from selling their product so that they can artificially inflate the price. Why would a company whose products aren't being sold on Amazon need to register their brand there.

[ggg9990]

Classic techbro. Knows virtually nothing about selling on Amazon; happy to accuse a retailer and author of a detailed blog post of not knowing much about selling on Amazon.

[bitmapbrother]

Amazon is the new eBay as I like to say. Ever try searching for a Chromecast on Amazon? The number of Chinese counterfeits available is staggering.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_6?url=search-alias...

And since Amazon profits from these third party sellers they are complicit.

[gowld]

That's a special case because Amazon intentionally hacks their own store to block people from buying Chromecasts.

[bitmapbrother]

Not only does Amazon intentionally hack their own store to block people from buying Chromecasts, but they also junk up their search results with Chromecast knockoffs just to make sure their customers have the best shopping experience.

[ceejayoz]

Those don't look like counterfeits.

[Keverw]

https://www.amazon.com/Display-Wishpower-Receiver-Miracast-A...

Wishpower is the brand, yet Chrome logo. Supports Airplay, I thought that was Apple exclusive? 2.3 stars.

Does seem odd to me, unless by some coincidence they licensed the Chrome logo from Google and Airplay from Apple and then also happened to get badly reviewed.

[ceejayoz]

I tend to treat listings that say "this isn't a Chromecast" as cheap knock-offs, not counterfeits. The logo may be a trademark infringement, but I'm iffy on calling it counterfeit.

[bitmapbrother]

Of course they do. Not only do they copy the form factor of the version 1 and 2 Chromecasts they also copy the Chromecast logo and even place a G in the middle to further try and trick users. These 1 star reviews of the following copycat show just how easily people think they're buying a real Chromecast.

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B075KDML13/ref=acr_se...

[secstate]

Well, the top listing is manufactured by "Wishpower" so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's probably not Google.

[gowld]

It plays "High Defination" video so it's probably better than Google.

[ceejayoz]

That listing explicitly states "this isn't a Chromecast".

[candiodari]

No ?

Let me find the first 10 links matching "Chromecast". [1]

ONLY the 1st and 3rd links don't have misleading/deliberately confusing or outright stolen trademarks on them (but they aren't chromecasts). Examples include the "G" on 5 and 6 in the font Google uses or the Youtube logo on 7. Examples of outright stolen trademarks include links 2, 4, 8, 9 and 10 all have the Chrome logo.

For completeness, the (only) actual link to Chromecasts on amazon is here [3].

The first and third links are weird, as in they're an entirely different product category from a Chromecast. Why are they even in there ? They are very much not chromecasts.

I would like to point out that if you are looking for a Chromecast, ALL of those products will be sorely disappointing. 1 and 3 don't even support streaming web content to them in any way, and all the others are chinese wireless display mirroring devices, some are even low-res versions.

None of them have anywhere near the compatibility or functionality that Chromecast provides. If you buy these and expect them to do what a Chromecast does, you'll be sorely disappointed.

If this is what happens to Google, imagine what will happen to you on Amazon to the inventors of fidget spinners, or those cubes. The web is full of articles and forum complaints about fake products on amazon. Link to the trend [2].

Links when searching "Chromecast"

1. Fire TV stick with Alexa ...

2. Wifi Display Dongle,Wishpower HDMI 1080P Mini Display Receiver TV Miracast DLNA AirMirror Airplay for IOS/Android/Windows/Mac

3. Roku Express | 5X more powerful HD Streaming (2017)

4. WiFi Display Dongle,Wishpower 2018 WiFi Wireless 1080P Mini Display Receiver HDMI TV Miracast DLNA Airplay for IOS/Android/Windows/Mac(New Version)

5. 2018 Cymocho G5 Wireless Wifi Display Dongle, HDMI 1080P TV Receiver Adapter, Support Google Chrome for YouTube Miracast Airplay DLNA TV Stick for Android/ Mac/ iOS / Windows

6. Wecast E68 Wireless Wifi Display Dongle TV Receiver Adapter 1080P Full HD support Google Chromecast for Netflix YouTube miracast airplay DLNA TV Stick for Android/ Mac/ iOS / Windows

7. 1080P HDMI Adapter Wireless Display, PTView Miracast Dongle, 2.4G Streaming Media Share Player, Mirroring Receiver TV Stick, Airplay Dina For iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Samsung, LG, Android, Smart Phones

8. WiFi Wireless Display Dongle Receiver 1080P HDMI TV Stick Miracast Media Streamer for Phone TV Support Miracast & Airplay & DLNA

9. WIFI Display Dongle, WiFi Wireless 1080P Mini Display Receiver HDMI TV Miracast DLNA Airplay for IOS/Android

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[1] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3...

[2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=amazon%2...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015UKRNGS

[MaxBarraclough]

Fortunately, if you search 'fire tv' there are no counterfeits in sight.

Curious that Amazon enforce their ban on Chromecasts so much better than their ban on counterfeits.

[ceejayoz]

There's quite a few bits of trademark infringement, but they're not calling themselves Chromecasts in the title nor the manufacturer field.

When I think "counterfeit", I think listings like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008ALAAV0/

Manufacturer: Apple. Title: Apple. Reviews: "arrived broken", "opened it up and it was fake", "Apple said it was a fake", etc.

[Bitcoin_McPonzi]

Did you read the article? It says right at the top:

> There is something extremely simple Amazon could do about it. If you have a registered brand in the Brand Registry and don't sell the product wholesale - there could be one box to check for that.