Beats suing Chinese retailers for fake headphones

Well-known headphone brand Beats is suing a number of Chinese e-stores for selling counterfeit versions of its products.

The move suggests that Beats, which has just been taken over by Apple in a $3bn deal, may be moving towards a more pro-active approach to anti-counterfeiting under its new owner.
 
It has filed a lawsuit against a number of unidentified online marketplaces based in China for trademark infringement and selling fake versions of the company’s headphones, sometimes overtly. Some of the sites brazenly say that the products they are selling are replicas or fakes to bring in buyers who are willing to pay less.

Beats claims the fake products are being sold via online retailers which deal widely in counterfeits and rake in $135bn in revenue per year, "contribute to tens of thousands of lost jobs for legitimate businesses and broader economic damages such as lost tax revenue every year."

The company is hoping the lawsuit will enable them to take over the domain names and recapture some of the illicit gains from the trade.

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