I've reported an auction for an obviously fake Zipp wheelset before and they got removed.

But yeah, searching for stuff is made a lot harder by all the China listings and I've become a lot more cautious about buying.

ebay is a classic way to sell counterfeits products for now 20 years

These nice luxury handbags sold 10% of the usual price, you can find on ebay... counterfeits of course
These nice carbon wheels, frame, .... also

There is absolutely no control, as it is not considered as professional sales

You pay peanuts, you get monkey

Yes, that one's going into the mental vault. Lol!

People who would rather knowingly buy counterfeit stuff instead of the great stuff that is being produced by cheaper brands

The short answer: it's up to the company that owns the trademark that the products infringe.

There's a dispute process that eBay follows, and it's one of the best in the secondary market. Tiffany's has had success for years with removing not only individual listings, but getting accounts (and I think even IP addresses) removed/banned.

BUT, and this is a big but, Tiffany's has an entire team dedicated to this kind of thing. It takes man hours and resources to either have people on computers scouring listings for counterfeits, filing the necessary forms with eBay, rinse and repeat, or writing a bot to do the same.

For some of these companies, it's probably not the most economical use of their resources. So we, as consumers, have a catch-22: Either they continue to invest in R&D for new products, or they invest in busting counterfeits and slow down on new products.

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Brenden Macy
Sports & Entertainment Attorney
I am Drive. I am Grit. I am Determination.

who would pay for policing ?

ebay/Amazon don't care, everyone pays the same to sell on their platforms, all the money is good.

brands run expensive monitoring programs to go after counterfeits, but it really raises their cost of doing business, and thus prices.

https://www.outsideonline.com/...stop-lying-ourselves

maybe we could just, you know, not buy cheap crap off ebay and Amazon ?

Lots of companies/brands do, but the cost is significant.

I'm wondering if there's some appetite for a firm focused on the industry to provide the service. I.e., I sign up Trek, Canondale, Ritchie, Specialized, etc., and police for a smaller fee that it would cost them to open a "Compliance" position. Or, you sign up and agree to pay a fee per listing removed. Just spit-balling, but if brands want to protect against fakes on these markets, it's going to cost money somewhere.

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Brenden Macy
Sports & Entertainment Attorney
I am Drive. I am Grit. I am Determination.

There is a company that does that for the outdoor industry it is called net enforcers.

To a certain extent it is policed, buyers and brands have the power to report the products being sold and if I'm not mistaken even the seller.

This can result in the product being removed from the site and seller can even get suspended. Problem is the same seller can register a new name and begin selling again under a different handle, then there's also the problem of the 100+ other sellers with the exact same product.