If you’re going to be a product entrepreneur, sooner or later you will have to deal with counterfeit products. It doesn’t matter if you’re a tiny one item inventor or NIKE, it happens to everyone.
The first time I heard about a counterfeiter I looked up “wrist water bottle” on the search engines and found a picture of me wearing my own product on a Chinese website. Since it had a phone number I called them up. When they were trying to sell me my own product they spoke perfect English, until I told them they were selling a counterfeit product and I owned the intellectual property. Suddenly, “no English”.
When I found counterfeiters selling my product on ebay I called up the company to let them know. As a company that deals with multiple people selling everything from used bikes to used chewing gum thrown away by Brittany Spears, they have to keep a handle on counterfeits. [Read more…] about How eBay Deals With Counterfeit Products