An electronics manufacturer tried to take a bite out of Apple’s business, and now Apple is biting back.
Apple filed a lawsuit in California this week against Mobile Star, a company which the former alleges has been passing off its chargers as authentic Apple originals on Amazon.
Patently Apple posted screenshots of a listing (Amazon product ID ASIN B012YEWP2K) that appeared to purport to be an Apple product, but the fine print contradicted that with a line reading “ships from and sold by Amazon.com.” A customer review on that item stated that the charger caught fire after just a few hours’ use.
When Apple purchased 100 similar “sold by Amazon” chargers, it determined that 90 percent of them were fakes. Amazon pointed the finger at Mobile Star, which is where this week’s suit comes in.
Sure, Apple is certainly incentivized to get copycats off the market in order to hoard that business for itself, but there’s a difference between finding a cheap third-party product and that third party trying to pass it off as the original. Besides, when there’s a risk of fire, explosion, or electrocution on the line, it seems like it’s for the greater good to stick with OEM here, despite a slight upcharge. (Note: That advice is precisely backwards for Samsung Galaxy Note 7 owners.)
As of this writing, the listing flagged by Patently Apple is no longer live on the U.S. Amazon site, but it’s still up in India.
The Daily Dot
H/T Engadget
Update 11:09pm CT Oct. 22: In an email to the Daily Dot, Amazon has issued a statement regarding Apple’s recent lawsuit:
“Amazon has zero tolerance for the sale of counterfeits on our site. We work closely with manufacturers and brands, and pursue wrongdoers aggressively.”