WAR AGAINST FAKES: CALL TO FIGHT PIRACY IS STRONGER THAN EVER

Even as counterfeit goods thrive in the ever-expanding universe of e-commerce portals, the call to band together to fight piracy is stronger than ever, finds Nikita Puri

About a month ago, Nikhil Infant was telling his brother about the Bose Bluetooth-enabled speaker he had ordered after spotting“an awesome deal” on an e-commerce website. Today, the speakers its in his room gathering dust .“I trusted the seller because he had made allowance for a cash-on-delivery option ,” he says .“I got ripped off. The product is a fake .”

Author and politician Sh as hi Tharo or, too, encountered a fake when, in his words, a “smart, well-dressed man” approached him at Mumbai airport late last year. Them an wanted an auto graph on Tharoor’ s book, An Era of Darkness. What he didn’ t re ali se was that he was holding out a pirated edition of the book, a paperback, for the author to sign. He had bought it one-commerce behemoth, Amazon.

“How is this piracy? I bought my brother the same book through Amazon ,” Tharoorw as asked following the revelation of the incident on Twitter .“The only legal edition of the book is in hardback. All paperbacks are pi rated and Amazon should not be selling them,” Tharoor replied.

Stumbling upon counterfeits is not a one-off occurrence and even e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Flip kart are falling prey to merchants pushing fakes. What’ s more, they’ re re ali sing that the struggle to weed counterfeit products out of their orbits is harder than it is the or is ed to be.

Those who shop online stand united in the thought that the act isak into arranging a gift to one self. It arrive sony our doorstep all wrapped up, waiting to be tried and tested. Now imagine a scenario where the shoes you ordered online fit exactly right and are just as lime green as you wanted them to be, only they read “Liver” instead of, say ,“Lee Cooper ”. Even the cardboard box they came in had proudly announced they were Lee Coopers, recall sB V en kat es war aP ra sad, a No ida-based customer who received just such a product.

The problem of fake goods finding an online platform is a global one, says Pin a ki ran jan Mis hr a, partner and national leader( retail and consumer products ), Ernst& Young. “It’s everywhere,” hesays.

A recent case involved American lifestyle and footwear brand Skechers, which filed a case against Flip kart and four sellers on thee-portal alleging the sale of counterfeit products in the brand’ s name. With the help of court-appointed commissioners, the company raided seven warehouse sin Delhi and Ahmed a bad and reportedly recovered fakes. Flip kart did not respond to questions on the issue, and Skechers has refused to comment saying that the matter is in court.

In another case, ar aid at aware house in Me e ru t yielded a stock of fake sports goods—Cos co and Ni via balls. These were lined up to be sold online on some of India’ s most popular e-commerce sites.

Earlier, in 2015, lawyers representing La co ste, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and Levi’ s were part of a court-backed raid in Delhi where they confiscated fake apparel from aware house reportedly owned by Style my way. com. This was around the same time that American headphone maker Skull candy took Pay tm to court for allegedly selling counterfeits, and Luxottica, maker of Ray-Ban sunglasses, got an in junction against Shop Clues for allegedly hosting fakes.

“We have tried to give comfort to both the court and the brand by ensuring preemptive measures and quick solutions to prevent recurrence of such cases ,” says Am bar Deep, vice president( products and customer experience ), Shop Clues .“In a similar High Court matter, the case was favour ab ly disposed of as the brand was satisfied with our collaborative effort in addressing counterfeiting issues and challenges faced by thee-commerce industry.”

Al most everyone in the equation, barring counterfeiters, ofcourse, suffer the fall out of the counterfeit trade growing online. While the shopper is subjected to questionable quality and dubious provenance of the product, brands partnering with online marketplaces often have to brave a hit to their profits. And while customers and brands alike may direct their ir eat e-commerce platforms, the impact of piracy is unsettling for them too.

“Brands re cog ni se our intermediary position under the information technology regulations,” says Shop Clues’s

Deep. E-commerce players maintain that they are just a marketplace, an intermediary, thus dividing opinions on accountability.

“When a counterfeit item is sold online, in practice and principle the world over, the role of the intermediary is reactionary in nature ,” says B ha rat v irwith intellectual property law firm Saikrishna & Associates. As and when a platform is informed about a counterfeit being listed, it is their duty is to take the listing down, he explains.

“E-commerce companies are often found fl outing the Intermediaries rules 2011 made under the IT Act ,2000,” says Mumbai based cy ber law advocate Pr ash ant Mali. Counterfeit sellers get away, feels Mali, by exploiting the loophole sin e-commerce platforms where the credential sofa seller aren’ t checked.

Even as the enormity that is the counterfeit goods space goes largely untracked, e-commerce companies appear to be tightening their belts. Paytm, for instance, de-listed 85,000 sellers in one fell swoop, in an attempt to weed out dubious merchants last year.

When you buy from a platform, you are relying on the platform’ s credibility, says Mis hr a.M any echo this line of thinking .“I don’ t believe e-commerce companies are just a platform. I think they have a role to play in being an intermediary ,” says F al gun iN ayar, founder and CEO,Nykaa, a beauty and wellness e-portal .“It is the responsibility of e-commerce companies to check what they are selling on their sites .”

“Fake and counterfeit products area blemish on the business ofane-commerce player,” says brand expert H ari sh Bi jo or. “Discovery of fakes leads to a total distrust of the e-commerce brand in question. Asitis,show a tendency to spread the word that online is a medium that sells fakes. Discoveries such as the ones alleged stoke the fire even more,” headds.

Aware that such incidents can tarnish their reputation and compromise their credibility, e-portals are getting watchful. “Customer-awareness programmes, tam per-proof packaging and taking legal action against a seller found to be offering fake products are some of the ways we maintain quality guidelines ,” says a Flip kart spokesperson.

The pressure to adhere to guidelines is trick ling down to merchants .“Why is Flip kart so strict ?” asks a merchant on an online discussion platform for sellers .“It has really tightened regulations. Background checks and letter of authentication have become especially important for Flip kart in the last three years ,” says a representative of the All India Online Vendors Association.

Causalities in any war have innocent victims. Joining e-shoppers in harm’ s way are also a few sellers, like the one who was black listed on Amazon after a customer expressed doubts about the product’ s authenticity .“This is my letter from the brand; Ia ma certified distributor of the product ,” says the merchant, hoping he’ ll be allowed back on the platform.

Many believe that partnering with brands and hosting only authorised dealers is the way to crack down on piracy .“But as long as the product is genuine, anyone can legally sell it ,” says Singh. And, if only authorised sellers are allowed on e-commerce platforms, they wouldn’ t have access to the whole gamut of product choices that draw customers to such platforms, chips in the representative from the All India Online Vendors Association.

As many echo, what is happening in e-commerce is only a reflection of what happens in the brick-and-mortar world. “Online retail is still a relatively small proportion of the offline retail sector and often becomes a talking point regarding the issues as the content is readily available to the public online ,” says Deep of Shop Clues.

There are primarily two types of products that are counterfeited .“One that has a high brand recall and the other that offers a high margin ,” says Mishra. From sports goods and apparel to phone chargers, there’ s a lot that falls in these two segments. Adds Nay ar of Nykaa ,“Cosmetics area big market for counterfeit products, that’ s why we ensure that almost all of our sourcing is done from the brands themselves .”

For shoppers, the lure of convenience and competitive pricing is hard to resist. But it might not be wise to buy absolutely everything online. S hail Devil earnt this the hard way. When she opened a new bottle of omega -3 fish oil she had ordered off Amazon, she knew there was “something different” right away .“The bottle was much easier to open than the ones I had been buying from the distributor ,” she recalls. She discontinued it when she began to feel dizzy .“I went back to the distributor for a new bottle. This one was fine .”

Amazon re funded the money immediately, but the bottle is still sitting on her shelf asa reminder of what not to shop for online. In such cases, a customer can also find re dress al by approaching a consumer-friendly forum.

In late 2017, for instance, the Consumer Education and Research Centre, Ahmed a bad, took up the issue of a customer receiving a pack containing two fake La k me Eye conic Kaj al pencils.

Seven out of 340 customers who had bought the product from that particular seller on Amazon complained and received a refund. After the case was made public online via a Change.org petition requesting e-portals to clamp down on fake products, Amazon and Hindustan United Lever (which owns Lakme) reportedly worked together to provide all 340 customers with replacements.

“These are knee-jerk actions, anecdotal even,” says Bijoor. “The big issue is that there are just too many intermediary suppliers. E-commerce offers big volume opportunities. When it comes to such big volumes, the intention soft he best suppliers could change from good to bad ,” he says.

Mali is of the view that to stop piracy, custom sand shipping companies too have the on us of checking what’ s entering India. “I PR( intellectual property rights) units of the police should carry out frequent raid sand arrests ,” he says.

Brand san de-commerce platforms are already working together on black listing bad apple sand assisting search and seizure raids. P urging the nuisance of counterfeit goods remains a challenge in the physical world, too. Greater accountability and customer support might just be the answer.