Spain antitrust watchdog fines Amazon, Apple $218M
reuters.comA growing number of these EU-based fines against non-EU companies appear as opportunistic shakedowns.
The characterisation here is that Apple are trying to harm their own business by preventing the sale of their products, because such a characterisation allows Spain to levy a fine against wealthy American companies. When it's much more obvious that this is stemming the flow of counterfeit product into the EU. Something which the EU are working hard to stop, and I doubt we'd see a similar fine being levied against LVMH for stemming the flow of imitation handbags.
One need only walk down the streets of Madrid to see counterfeit vendors with their wares on corner tied sheets ready to run from the police, which are also actively attempting to stop such businesses.
> Apple said the agreement with Amazon was designed to limit the number of counterfeits sold online. Previously, the company was spending a lot of money and effort to send hundreds of thousands of 'take-down' notices to stop the sale of counterfeited devices, it said.
At least from my experience with Amazon, I can absolutely believe there's a lot of counterfeits of almost anything, and that Amazon selling the product themselves in partnership with the manufacturer is a great way to avoid counterfeits.
Who are these third-party sellers of new iPhones? Where and how are they getting them for cheaper, if they aren't counterfeit? Do we really need government to support and protect their business?
I imagine some of them may be legitimate grey market phones, but I suspect that Apple isn't lying about counterfeits. There are many fake products sold on Amazon, and I have had much worse luck with Amazon marketplace sellers than I have with random eBay sellers.