Ebay Piracy, Counterfeit Goods, UK Brand Protection

During Prohibition in 1920`s Chicago, law enforcement agencies sought to close Capone's Distilleries, Breweries and Speakeasies. Their problem was not that they did not know their location, but rather that no one was willing to act against Capone.

With regard to the supply of fakes, knockoff, bootleg and copies of copyright material and goods in modern Britain, we all know these items are widely available on Pirate websites and we all know that the "worst affected" is eBay.

Capone was a bootlegger, eBay facilitates modern bootlegging.

Although eBay is certainly not a criminal organisation, we all know that a proportion of its income is generated from the sale of illegal goods. UK Anti Piracy now works with eBay to fight fakes and counterfeits being sold on eBay and eBay also works with license holders via the Vero scheme.

eBay is arguably the most successful auction site of all time. At the time of writing, eBay has a reported global customer base of 233,000,000 people in 37 markets.

eBay had acquired a reputation as being an "open market" for pirated goods - eBay facilitates piracy.

We continue to work with and assist license holders and eBay in the struggle against Piracy on eBay.

However; although we regularly succeed in removing sellers who trade in Counterfeit Goods, the problem is massive and it is not confined to eBay (there are also issues with other sites). We now also work with Google, Facebook, YouTube, Ioffer and others.

We also wok with Chinese websites such as Taobao, DHgate and Alibaba.

We help victims of counterfeits - people who have inadvertently bought fake goods from eBay to obtain a full refund.

Please do not return fake items - they are your evidence and the Pirate will often simply relist it.

We are working with manufacturers and legitimate dealers to drive pirates out of business.

Counterfeit goods come in many forms and from multiple sources. Eg; pirated software and movies may be produced by a lone pirate (often working in a kitchen, bedroom or shed) or in a "counterfeiting factory" with multiple DVD copying machines which may clone CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray disks.

Pirates in other fields may purchase counterfeit goods for re-sale from sites such as Tradekey - please note that we do not provide links to such sites because we do not want to promote them (we work to close them).

Counterfeit Goods are often manufactured in Indian or Chinese factories (Guangzhou - also known as Canton or Kwangchow, China is probably the counterfeiting capital of the world). These fake goods are purchased in bulk for resale in the UK. Sellers are usually aware that they are selling fakes, but this is not always be the case because some suppliers claim to be OEM factories and their stock is surplus or seconds. However; we feel that in most cases, "only an idiot would believe this".

Other pirated goods include Oils and liquids (such as brake fluid). In these cases, low quality products are often transferred to Premium grade containers (eg; low quality oil used to fill Premium grade Oil containers and this is then sold as Premium Grade oil). In such cases, the buyer is obviously risking serious damage to his car - or worse. Some companies and individuals have even used eBay to sell fake brake pads and other safety critical components.

eBay obviously plays no part in such practices. But eBay takes "a cut" from the sale of fake and counterfeit goods. eBay provides a marketplace where fakes and counterfeits can be sold. UK Anti Piracy continues to work with eBay and we invite members of the public to tell us about pirate goods, and we invite legitimate companies to contact us and to work with us - we can help.