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.
Check the seller's catalogue before judging a listing. A legitimate seller has a shape: one category, consistent sourcing, prices that vary with the goods. A counterfeit operation has a different shape: dozens of unrelated premium brands, uniform discounts, stock photos, and an account history too short for the catalogue's size. That pattern is visible in two minutes and no single listing can hide it.
Counterfeiters follow demand signals: strong sales, high prices relative to manufacturing cost, and products whose quality is hard to judge from a photograph. If a product is expensive, popular, and bought on trust, it is a candidate. That is why the same categories get copied repeatedly and why a brand that was targeted once should expect a second wave.
The catalogue follows from the economics. An operation built on copied listings expands sideways, into whatever is trending this month, because its asset is the copying process, not expertise in any product. A real seller's catalogue deepens in one area over years. The counterfeit catalogue spreads across unrelated premium brands in weeks.
Open the seller page. Count the brands. If a three month old account lists forty premium brands across shoes, watches, bags, and electronics at the same discount band, the catalogue is the evidence, whatever the individual listing says. Read what the feedback actually describes: vague praise with no product detail, repeated phrasing, and feedback about shipping speed rather than goods are all consistent with a high volume copied operation.
Check whether the seller exists anywhere off the marketplace: a real business leaves traces, a website, a registration, a social presence with a history. Then check the photos against the brand's own product pages. Copied listings reuse the brand's photography, which a reverse image search will surface in seconds. Photographs taken on arrival day, if you do buy, become the evidence every later report relies on.
A report that reads as a documented case is processed as one. Include the listing URL, what is copied or misrepresented, your rights documentation, any test purchase evidence, and the catalogue pattern itself: the brand count, the account age, and three or four sibling listings. That last part is what turns a page removal request into an account review.
Buyers can help even without buying. A report with the listing URL and the tell you spotted costs a minute and feeds the pattern data marketplaces use to find the seller's other listings. Silence is the counterfeiters' favourite review, because a catalogue nobody reports is a catalogue that keeps its shape.
Keep reading: Who we protect covers a nearby case in this series.
Read the catalogue. Dozens of unrelated premium brands at uniform discounts on a young account is the signature. A legitimate seller's catalogue has one category, varied prices, and a history that matches its size.
Because their asset is the copying process, not the products. They follow demand signals, strong sales and high prices relative to cost, and expand into whatever is trending, which is what gives the catalogue its spread out shape.
Specifics: the listing URL, what is copied, your rights documentation, test purchase evidence if you have it, and the seller level pattern. Reports written as documented cases are processed faster than suspicions.
Yes, briefly. The listing URL and the tell you spotted feed the pattern data marketplaces use to find the seller's other listings. It costs a minute and it compounds.