Just wanted to clarify a bit of the legal terminology here. There's a loophole/exception to the first sale doctrine that says if the products are materially dif

Just wanted to clarify a bit of the legal terminology here. There's a loophole/exception to the first sale doctrine that says if the products are materially different, it can be considered trademark infringement even if the product was originally made by the brand. In some jurisdictions, there's a "quality control" subcategory of "material difference". The quality controls must be non pretextual. The basic argument is that if the brands's products are subject to quality control procedures that the alleged infringer is not following, then the products are different enough that it can potentially create a likelihood of confusion between the two. Only a jury can actually decide if there's such a material difference in a particular case. Now, quality control can be temperature controls, or it can be additional inspections before sale, and so on. It must be something where customers would care about the difference, so you can allege customer confusion. In these cases and in most of the vorys cases I've seen, the quality controls appear very pretextual. If the product is sealed, authentic, and there's no damage to it, it's hard to see why any consumer would care about any of the alleged differences in quality control. The cases I've seen where quality control was accepted by a court were typically imports, where there were actually different standards being used for the ones the brand was selling in the US. In my view, none of these would go anywhere if they made it to court. But that's very expensive - it's been at least several years that similar cases have been filed, I'm aware of over 100 so far across 30+ different brands, and as far as I know none have actually gone to a jury. Most settle well before that point, or are voluntarily dismissed.