A counterfeit uses another brand's trademarks to make buyers believe the product is genuine or authorised. A dupe imitates a design language while selling under its own branding, telling the buyer exactly what it is. Trademark law attacks the first decisively and the second only narrowly, through trade dress and design rights where they exist and are registered.
Marketplaces enforce repeat infringement in tiers. One published example runs warning plus 10 penalty points, then a 3 day suspension, a 7 day suspension, a 30 day suspension ends only when infringing items are removed, and permanent blocking at the fifth offence. Sellers climb those tiers when reports document a pattern, not when each listing is reported as if it were the first.
The tiered structure is common even where the details differ. Early offences draw warnings and listing removals. Continued offences draw account restrictions: shorter selling limits, suspensions measured in days, then longer suspensions, and finally termination. One marketplace's published merchant policy sets the ladder at a written warning with 10 penalty points, suspensions of 3 days and 7 days, a suspension of at least 30 days that ends only when all infringing items are taken down, and permanent blocking on the fifth offence.
US platforms operate under a legal version of the same idea. The DMCA requires service providers to adopt and reasonably implement a policy for terminating repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances, at 17 USC 512(i). Shopify states that when it terminates a store for repeat infringement, all shops owned or operated by the same repeat infringer are subject to termination too. The tiers are not decoration; they are the mechanism a pattern report is aiming at.
A single listing report asks for a page removal, and a page removal is what it gets. The seller loses one listing, keeps the account, and relists. The platform's reviewer sees one report with no history attached, because the history lives in the reporter's files, not in the report. The seller's tier does not move because nothing in the submission shows a tier should move.
The fix is to file the history with the report: the earlier listing URLs, the takedown dates, the seller's other listings using the same material, and a direct request to review the seller under the repeat infringer policy. That sentence, plus the evidence behind it, changes what the reviewer is being asked to do.
Keep an infringement log per seller: dates, URLs, actions, outcomes. When a seller reappears, the log turns a fresh complaint into a documented pattern in one message. Test purchase evidence belongs in the same file, because a delivered fake ties the listing to the account in a way screenshots alone cannot.
Do not overstate the log. Platforms act on documented patterns, and a report that claims ten offences and documents two damages the two. File exactly what the evidence shows, name the policy, and let the tiers do the rest.
Keep reading: Who we protect covers a nearby case in this series.
Yes, in tiers. Published ladders run from warnings and penalty points through suspensions of 3, 7, and 30 days to permanent blocking. US platforms also operate under the DMCA requirement to terminate repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.
Because a single listing report removes a page, not an account. To move the seller up the tiers, file the pattern: earlier listings, takedown dates, and a request for review under the repeat infringer policy.
The DMCA provision that conditions a service provider's safe harbor on adopting and reasonably implementing a policy to terminate repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. It is why every major US platform has such a policy.
Platforms try to close that door. Shopify, for example, states that all shops owned or operated by the same repeat infringer are subject to termination when one is terminated for repeat infringement.