Warner Bros. Sues A Ton Of Amazon Resellers For Selling 'Counterfeit' DVDs

from the counterfeit?-resale? dept

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The Hollywood Reporter has a story on Warner Bros. filing a lawsuit against a bunch of individuals who use Amazon's marketplace offering to sell DVDs that Warner Bros. claims are counterfeit. The lawsuit is pretty weak on details so far. The THR report speculates on whether or not this is about packaging up downloaded or camcorded movies and pretending they're official.However, if you look at the Amazon profile of the named defendant, Todd Beckham, you see that he has very good reviews . Currently, he has a 4.9 star rating with over 2,000 reviews. If he were selling inferior counterfeit products, you'd think people would complain, because his listings certainly suggest they're new official copies. So buyers seem to feel they're getting what they thought they bought. It's possible that he's just a, but THR wonders why WB doesn't just use Amazon's existing internal controls to terminate service for users who sell infringing works.WB apparently told THR that this isn't a case of going after used product sales (where it would have a tough case, given the first sale doctrine -- and, again, would likely lead to negative reviews, since the offerings don't seem to indicate "used" conditions), but it's unclear how or why the company thinks these DVDs are counterfeit. Again, given the sparseness of detail, it's entirely possible the targets are creating (apparently high quality) counterfeit flicks and selling them. But it would be nice to see a bit more evidence that that's the case, and this isn't just a case of being worried about being undercut by the secondary market. What's a little worrying is that, according to THR, WB is claiming that the sellers are violating its "distribution rights" to the films, not reproduction rights. That raises at least some questions over whether or not the concern is just competition, or actual unauthorized copies. At the very least, this will be a case worth following...

Filed Under: counterfeit, dvds, lawsuits

Companies: warner bros