Amazon is suing two influencers and over a dozen third-party sellers located in both the U.S. and China for advertising, promoting, and facilitating the sale of counterfeit luxury goods of accessories from Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Versace, Gucci, and Dior among other brands. Amazon has accused influencers Kelly Fitzpatrick and Sabrina Kelly-Krejci of using their Instagram, Facebook, personal websites, and TikTok accounts to promote counterfeit products being sold on Amazon. The complaint filed by Amazon states the influencers “engaged in a sophisticated campaign of false advertising for the purpose of evading Amazon’s counterfeit detection tools.”
Fitzpatrick and Kelly-Krejci reportedly promoted the items on their pages as “designer dupes,” which are when products are made to look like a designer item as a way to skirt around infringing on the official brands’ trademarks or copyrights. However, when the influencers told their followers they could use “hidden product links” to buy the dupes, the links sent them products that looked exactly like the designer items through Amazon’s marketplace without Amazon knowing. The scheme works like “buy this generic black leather wallet for $60 and receive this Gucci handbag instead!”
Both influencers had their lucrative Amazon influencer membership stripped, lost their growing number of followers, and had their original social media accounts shut down. This is one of many ways Amazon has taken a staunch stance on cracking down on fake products such as the creation of their Counterfeit Crimes Unit, made up of former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts. Allowing fake products to be sold on the platform hurts other credible brands who in the future decide to not sell on Amazon’s platform, such as Nike who recently departed the platform after citing the rampant sale of these counterfeit goods.
According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, “sale of counterfeit goods are one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world with domestic and international sales totaling $1.7 trillion and $4.5 trillion a year – a higher amount than either drugs or human trafficking…the impacts range from lost sales revenues to increased business costs to dilution of trademarks.”
Amazon seeks permanent injunctive relief and claims false designation of origin, false advertising, Washington Consumer Protection Act, and an order of full accounting.
Article by Carissa Chow