TOKYO (Kyodo) — A Japanese court on Friday ordered the Japanese unit of online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. to pay 35 million yen ($244,000) in damages for failing to take measures to stop sellers from offering fake products on its platform.
The focus of the trial at the Tokyo District Court was on the degree of obligation Amazon Japan G.K. has to police listings, and how much effort it must make to identify and remove counterfeit goods.
Medical equipment manufacturer Try and E Co. and its distributor Excel Plan Co. sought 280 million yen in damages against Amazon Japan, claiming that their sales declined due to the availability of counterfeit items.
Presiding Judge Yuko Shintani said Amazon is obliged to take effective measures against counterfeits, noting that it failed to stop listings of such products despite being made aware of them.
Try and E and distributor Excel Plan, both based in Kobe, filed the lawsuit over pulse oximeters for measuring blood oxygen levels. Only Excel Plan was compensated.
“The ruling was a landmark in terms of acknowledging the obligation to build an appropriate (authentication) system, as businesses practically have no other option but to use platforms such as that of Amazon,” a lawyer representing the plaintiffs said.
The pulse oximeters concerned are developed and manufactured by Try and E, and distributed exclusively by Excel Plan.
According to the suit, Excel Plan was selling a pulse oximeter on Amazon in 2021 while another seller listed a counterfeit item on the same page at about 10 percent of the price of the genuine product.
Since the Amazon system promotes goods with the lowest price, the fake product was more visible on the site, it said.
Excel Plan reported the situation and requested Amazon take appropriate action, but the page listing the genuine oximeter was deleted and the company was unable to sell it, according to the suit.
