Amazon, Ferragamo win lawsuit against counterfeiter

A judge in the US has granted Amazon and Italian designer Ferragamo a permanent injunction against a counterfeiter accused of selling counterfeit products on Amazon.com.

The judgment in the civil case against Guoxin Dai, who failed to appear in court, also awards statutory damages of $128,400 to Ferragamo for wilful violations of the Lanham Act, which protects the owner of federally registered marks from infringement, false designation of origin and false advertising.

The case focused on the sale of counterfeit Ferragamo belts by Dai, who is thought to reside in China and according to court documents used false information and documentation to mislead Amazon during the selling account registration process. It maintained that both Ferragamo and Amazon were damaged when Dai sold counterfeit imitations of Ferragamo-branded products on Amazon’s site.

Based on the declaration of Elaine Haskel, senior risk manager for Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU), Dai sold a minimum of $42,764.90 of counterfeit Ferragamo-branded products through his two selling accounts in approximately seven months.

Ferragamo is enrolled in Amazon’s brand registry, a free service to any rights owner with a registered trademark that aims to take down fraudulent listings automatically and allows brand owners to report violations.

It also subscribes to the online retailer’s Project Zero programme, a self-service counterfeit removal tool that claims to be able to take down listings within minutes.

In 2018, Ferragamo won a massive $60m in damages in a lawsuit brought against 150 websites selling counterfeits of its products. As the owners of infringing domains are often hard to identify the damages are generally seen as a deterrent rather than a way to recoup lost revenues.