I disagree. To extend your analogy, it's like taking a sample of 300 cars, finding that 3 of them need impounding and then locking them all up, leaving the onus on the owner to go through the hassle of getting their car out if they weren't infringing.
And where are you getting this 1% number from? Why are you assuming a 99% false positive rate? It's not hard to identify bogus retailers in this case because luxury brands usually have direct contractual relations with retail partners rather than selling though wholesale channels. So if you see cheap stuff.com selling 'Chanel' merchandise and they're not on the list of authorized distributors, then by definition they're selling knockoffs.
I would assume it's from this part of the article:
"How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit."
It was closer to 1.3% if that makes you feel any better.
That doesn't speak to the point I made about distributor relationships. There's a reasonable presumption here that anyone selling such merchandise actually offering counterfeit goods because Chanel does not sell into the wholesale market.
You're effectively asking that conviction precede an arrest, albeit in relation to a website rather than a person. That's not how things work; a strong showing of probable cause is sufficient to act, and the complainant is bonded against the possibility of misidentification. That's only $20,000 per claim of infringement, but when you think about it that adds up to a total of over $6 million that Chanel has paid over to the court as surety that it is acting in good faith. In other words, the company is literally putting its money where its mouth is, and will lose some or all of that money to the extent that its allegations are inaccurate.
I don't think that asking for evidence to back up accusations is the same as having conviction precede arrest. And I still don't know how the counterfeit products ordered from three of the sites constitute evidence against the two hundred something others.
Perhaps the only thing that would help me understand would be if there was evidence unknown to me linking all the sites to the same group. Something like that would make the case far more comprehensible.
I'm not on the list of authorized distributors.
I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise.
How? According to Chanel's corporate website, they only sell through their own boutiques and authorized retail partners. This is known as a selective distribution agreement, and here is a 2008 report on internet sales models (prepared for Chanel) which articulates the differences from normal wholesale-retail models: http://www.crai.com/ecp/assets/Selective_distribution_Caffar...
My whole point is that no, you can't just go into business as a Chanel retailer, and you'll find the same is true for Hermes, LV, and a variety of other luxury brands. A great many high-value manufacturers make use of selective or exclusive distribution agreements to maintain price discrimination and market positioning for their brand across a global market.
Oh, I'm quite familiar with sales models, and they don't really matter much here. Authorized distribution is a glorified honor system.
I can buy Chanel, Hermes, LV, or other luxury products and resell them at any super-low, cheap-as-dirt price I wish. There is no arrangement in which you can determine "by definition" that the products I'm selling at a ridiculously low rate are knockoffs.
I could be a moron business person and lose my ass. I could have decided to violate my retail agreement and do what I wish. I could have received a box of the stuff from a friend & resell it for $20 a pop. I could have stolen a shipment of goods or procured them in some other non-authorized fashion and yet still be selling, by definition, the genuine article.
I was taking issue with the erroneous assertion one could tell, by definition, that a cheap luxury product was a knockoff. There is no way to reliably determine by price alone. A dirt-cheap luxury good can certainly heighten one's suspicions of its authenticity, but the price alone is no defining factor in judging a knockoff from the real thing.
...which is why the manufacturer has had to put up a $20,000 bond for each website it alleges in selling counterfeit goods, lest some of the operators contest this determination and come to court with evidence that they are actually legitimate purveyors of used goods. I have a strong hunch that they won't have to pay out on those bonds.
I could be a moron business person and lose my ass. I could have decided to violate my retail agreement and do what I wish. I could have received a box of the stuff from a friend & resell it for $20 a pop.
Of course you could, but the probability that you actually are is sufficiently remote to be set aside. In the unlikely event that such a claim turns out to be true, you'll be compensated.
I could have stolen a shipment of goods or procured them in some other non-authorized fashion and yet still be selling, by definition, the genuine article.
Insofar as you are marketing and selling to Us customers from a US-registered website, that in itself would be sufficient justification to shut your website down. Convicting someone requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but putting a halt to self-evidently criminal activity does not.
