I run a mid-sized online distributorship: there's a lot of factors at play. Have a few private label items + exclusives with a few US manufacturers and fought

I run a mid-sized online distributorship: there's a lot of factors at play. Have a few private label items + exclusives with a few US manufacturers and fought the war against counterfeiters for the past 7-8 years on Amazon, eBay, and a few other sites. These thoughts pertain primarily to Amazon. THE ARTICLE'S PROBLEM IS BEING SOLVED: Amazon Brand registry 2.0 just came out late 2016 - if you have applied for a trademark (with USPTO registration), you can brand gate your products and prohibit others from selling. Amazon had to do this as a response because things were entirely out of control the past few years. It's definitely a process full of friction to the rights-holder, but this overcomes not only counterfeit items (other people stealing your brand) but also inauthentic items (grey market products not authorized by you as a vendor). AS A CUSTOMER: as long as you can identify you have a counterfeit, you just use the magic words and apply for a refund saying it's a counterfeit and you're protected. From personal experience -- you can do it post-facto ~90 days and Amazon will still be on your side. AS A BUSINESS: basically enter the brand registry program and gate your products as needed, depending on who else is selling your stuff. You need to spend some effort making sure people aren't stealing your photos and designs and camping out on other listings -- that's probably the highest point of friction right now, but note those knockoffs can't enter your brand without triggering gating effects. There's a chunk of opportunity here for full service, value-added resellers like myself here who essentially run the online channels for older American businesses that aren't techified at all and need to navigate all the techno-bureaucracy. AS AMAZON... it's tricky, you need to set up strong controls for brand and facilitate a system so that it forces the eventuality it desires -- every manufacturer directly working with Amazon ("most efficient"). Letting the counterfeiters run a bit amok actually forces the hands of the brand owners to be really hands on in Amazon sellercentral, sell direct to Amazon via vendorcentral, or deal with the constant irritation of counterfeits, review/performance bombing by competitors, and their associated performance notifcations (that can shut down your store). Kinda brilliant actually. ON BRANDS and knockoffs: when I as a consumer buy something, I am spending money to solve a want or need. The brand and its associated reputation gives me an expected value that said shirt/snack/shaver is going to give me what I want without much downside -- it's gonna fit well, or is tasty and will not poison me, or will trim my hairs cleanly... and that expectation is the value of a brand. In this regard, yes, I think counterfeiting is unethical since you are delivering a fake promise that your shitty product will do XYZ based on a good marketplace actor's performance.