Canon Wins Major Battle in its Ongoing War Against Counterfeit Batteries
Canon has been at war with producers of counterfeit batteries for almost a decade and has announced that it just won a major battle in a targeted settlement with a major shipping and fulfillment company that supplied them to the market.
Canon Has Stopped One Major Way Counterfeits Enter the Market
Canon has announced that it has reached an agreement with one of China’s leading logistics and fulfillment companies. The two had been in a dispute over the warehousing and shipping of counterfeit Canon camera batteries into the United States for China-based sellers.
As part of the newly-announced settlement, the logistics company has agreed to cease its distribution of the counterfeit batters to consumers in the United States.
Canon says that it was able to isolate this particular way counterfeits were being introduced to the market after a two-year investigation, which was found to be a novel method that the company hadn’t encountered previously. Canon found that instead of shipping the batteries directly to consumers in the United States, China-based sellers were instead sending their goods in bulk to large fulfillment warehouses that are located in the United States. These warehouses would then ship the batteries to consumers in the United States.
Canon says this new method not only enables China-based merchants to indirectly ship their counterfeit goods swiftly to American and Canadian consumers but also makes it harder for branded manufacturers to track and prevent the flow of counterfeit goods.
“After we discovered that China-based infringers were using this new shipment method to bring counterfeit Canon batteries into the United States, we started working on a creative strategy to remove these counterfeit products from the market. We were able to find an innovative solution by proceeding directly against the fulfillment/warehouser to halt the distribution of these fake goods in the United States,” Seymour Liebman, Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel of Canon U.S.A., Inc., says.
“We believe that we are the first intellectual property owner to successfully stop this new method of importation and distribution, and we hope other companies will follow our lead and utilize this novel approach to stopping counterfeiters.”
Canon’s Aggressive War Against Counterfeits
Canon has been waging a war with counterfeit battery manufacturers for nearly a decade. The issue isn’t necessarily that the batteries aren’t a first-party product, but that they masquerade as such. Batteries are being sold to photographers in North America as legitimate Canon products, but are instead cheaply-constructed counterfeits that tend to have worse performance or could even be dangerous.
In 2013, Canon launched its “Play it Safe” initiative to help consumer spot counterfeit batteries. The following year, it shared a video PSA that further detailed the issues with counterfeits and how to spot them. In 2020, Canon won a major lawsuit against eBay users selling counterfeit equipment.
Today, the company still maintains a detailed webpage that explains how to spot counterfeit equipment and the hazards of using them.
