Amazon also plagiarizes its own products! What else can we do to stop counterfeit goods?

Amazon now has a very tough attitude towards counterfeit and copycat products. As long as someone complains, it will take serious action. It is difficult to save their products without detailed evidence to appeal.

As Amazon’s own children, Amazon’s own products are its own storefront, so no matter what, Amazon’s own products should not be associated with counterfeiting. Unexpectedly, in the past two days, foreign media revealed that Amazon’s own products actually plagiarized another brand’s products!

Self-operated products also involve plagiarism

The product that was exposed for plagiarism this time was a shoe product from the brand 206 Collective, which is a standard Amazon-owned brand that mainly involves the shoe category.

The brand that was copied was Allbirds, a clothing startup based in Silicon Valley. A few years ago, the company took the entire Silicon Valley by storm with a pair of running shoes that were extremely comfortable and reasonably priced.

Although Allbirds is now trying other items, its main product is still this comfortable running shoe, which Allbirds does not sell on Amazon.

The product that Amazon is currently selling is exactly this Allbirds running shoe, which is less than half the price of the genuine Allbirds. As for whether it is a copycat or not, I put the photos of the two below for you to compare and see.

The one above is Amazon's own product, while the one below is Allbirds' product. At first glance, it is really hard to tell the difference between the two products. I think most sellers would think this is blatant plagiarism.

In fact, even American consumers feel this way.

Under this Amazon knockoff product, almost all the reviews are green-labeled reviews. Of course, since this is a self-operated product, it is understandable that Amazon invites Vine users to leave more reviews for itself.

However, the review that received the most Helpful likes was a 2-star direct review without any actual purchase. The content is very interesting. Let’s take a look.

The Allbirds in the front happens to be the name of the brand that was plagiarized. Combined with the 2-star bad review and the standard American swear word at the end, we can understand that this consumer expressed his strong dissatisfaction with Amazon's self-operated plagiarism, and received likes from many consumers.

This basically proves Amazon's own plagiarism. Now that various media are exposing this matter, I believe it is only a matter of time before Allbirds comes to Amazon and files a lawsuit.

Allbirds, a well-known American brand, was copied by Amazon itself. We, as third-party sellers, will have to deal with more and more copycat products, which will be even more difficult to deal with. What can effectively prevent copycat and counterfeit products?

A plan to end copycat products?

As early as the first half of this year, Amazon launched a plan to completely put an end to copycat products - Project Zero.

This program allows sellers to directly remove suspected infringing counterfeit products on Amazon without having to report them to Amazon each time.

Every seller who participates in the Zero Plan can find a self-deletion entrance in the background. You can delete it by entering the Asin of the product you suspect is a copy of your product.

The deleted third-party sellers also have the right to appeal to Amazon, and Amazon also has a special working group to supervise the brands that participate in the Zero Plan to ensure that they do not abuse their rights.

When it was first launched, the threshold for Plan Zero was quite high, and only some hot brands could be invited to participate. However, in recent months, Amazon has also opened up the relevant application link to ordinary sellers. We have also received feedback from some sellers that they have registered and can use Plan Zero normally. Sellers with brand records can apply to try it out.

Although it is not known whether Project Zero can delete its own products, this plagiarism incident by Amazon is bound to have a certain negative impact on its own products.

Government-related supervisory agencies have long been investigating whether Amazon is using the sales data of third-party sellers to develop and sell its own similar products. This incident will become evidence for the supervisory agencies to attack Amazon, and the possibility of self-operated products being separated from Amazon's business in the future is even higher.

In any case, it is not a bad thing for us that this incident has been exposed. We just need to protect our products during the period when this incident gradually ferments. Sellers who want to apply for the Zero Plan to delete counterfeit products can scan the QR code and contact me for the application link.

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group