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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

The author appears to accidentally make the assumption that in order for it to be a counterfeit part, it must be 100% counterfeit.

CBP doesn’t work that way. Honey that is adulterated with 25% corn syrup is counterfeit. Ripping the Nike logo off a genuine shoe, and gluing it onto an imported shoe, is still counterfeiting. Swapping the logo on a cheap handbag, with a genuine logo from a ruined one, is still counterfeiting. From these examples and others, they are trained to recognize “hybrids” as fake in multiple industries.

Third party screens with genuine Apple cables and logos? Why should CBP treat that differently? How does CBP know you aren’t going to sell them as genuine parts?

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> Third party screens with genuine Apple cables and logos? Why should CBP treat that differently?

Because reselling a genuine cable is completely legal even if you attach it to a third-party screen. Swapping logos is not comparable because the cable provides a genuine function completely unrelated to the logo that happens to be printed on it.

> How does CBP know you aren’t going to sell them as genuine parts?

That isn't CBPs problem, its Apple's problem to identify and enforce their trademark if someone actually does attempt to sell them as genuine parts.

> reselling a genuine cable is completely legal even if you attach it to a third-party screen.

The courts disagree that this is always true.

For example:

https://casetext.com/case/martins-herend-imports-v-diamond-g...

https://casetext.com/case/mary-kay

https://casetext.com/case/warner-lambert-co-v-northside-deve...

Even Wikipedia:

> A trademark owner can overcome the first sale doctrine defense if it can show that the unauthorized reseller is using the trademark on goods that lack its quality control standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

> Swapping logos is not comparable because the cable provides a genuine function completely unrelated to the logo that happens to be printed on it.

Not necessarily. The law cares about the brand, not the function. Morally, there’s a distinction; legally, I don’t see why the functionality has any relevance.

> Because reselling a genuine cable is completely legal even if you attach it to a third-party screen

CBP seized hybrid products, as mentioned above, all the time; even when no logo is present (honey with adulterations is a big problem). The claim it’s completely legal isn’t necessarily true. Individually selling a screen, or a ribbon cable, would probably have much better luck than the combination of the two.

So you advocate for not being able to sell a honda civic with a ferrari air freshner inside it? What about a skoda with a VW radio inside (i think it fits in some models)?

> Because reselling a genuine cable is completely legal even if you attach it to a third-party screen. Swapping logos is not comparable because the cable provides a genuine function completely unrelated to the logo that happens to be printed on it.

Seems like a plausible test but it's easy to poke holes in it. What if I get some shoe laces with a pattern of the Louis Vuitton logo and put them in generic shoes?

> Seems like a plausible test but it's easy to poke holes in it. What if I get some shoe laces with a pattern of the Louis Vuitton logo and put them in generic shoes?

Since the specific example was explicitly marked third party screens that shipped with a official Apple cable included that happens to have Apple logos on it in an invisible way, your analogy is not great.

If I sold a pair of generic shoes labeled as just generic shoes, but lace them with a set of laces from Louis Vuitton shoes that have a small logo hidden on the tip, never advertising this fact in any way, that would be the comparison.

No one is claiming that the whole assembly is an official Apple product, they're not even marketing the official cable, so why should the fact that they did actually use an official cable suddenly make the whole product "counterfeit"?

> Seems like a plausible test but it's easy to poke holes in it.

You are right, its definitely not sufficient and from what I can tell legally, the main test in the cases we have been talking about is whether or not its likely to confuse consumers.

So in the case of the screens, the fact that it is a tiny logo on a functional internal component that the consumer won't see strongly indicates there is little intent or risk of consumer confusion.

In the case of the shoes, there is risk of confusion. Its possible that it could be made legal if sold as "Sketcher's Shoe with Custom Louis Vuitton laces" as that would mitigate the risk of confusion.

For one thing, your examples involve amalgamation in a way that is simply not applicable to computer parts with removable cables. Those have always been understood to be separate parts. If I was selling a computer with an Intel CPU, but used a third-party cooler, or a third-party accessory cable, nobody would claim I was selling a "counterfeit" device.

> How does CBP know you aren't going to sell them as genuine parts?

You can come up with a venal explanation for any item sold in commerce or any human behavior. If we enforced import and intellectual property law based on what people might do, nobody could do anything.

This is a nonsensical argument, the CBP doesn’t know if they will be sold illegally, the same way they don’t know that a company importing corn syrup AND honey is actually going to mix them and sell a counterfeit product. A bottle of corn syrup and a bottle of honey are both legal products, a third-party screen with a hidden non-advertised genuine component is also legal, it’s only afterwards that an illegal product could be made.

It’s impossible for the CBP to know if illegal activity will occur, but you are advocating seizure without due process based on the possibility of a crime.

The logos are microscopic and for internal connections. The screens don't claim to be genuine

Even more so than this, counterfeit goods can be made in the same factories as the real deal. One of the problems that luxury brands have is that contract manufacturers will sometimes either divert items with minor quality-control failures, or overproduce and sell into grey-market channels.

Is there a difference between a factory that overproduces some fancy sneakers and resells them through unauthorized channels (which is a generally accepted example of counterfeiting) and this case? I'm sure there is, but it's a difference of degree rather than a bright-line issue.

Did these cables come from factory overproduction? The article doesn't say.

It doesn't - but, look, this is Apple we are talking about. What're the odds that there's anything in Apple's supply chain that they'd be willing to allow suppliers to sell to anyone else?

A bunch of other commenters are saying these were pulled from legally bought and re-sold phones -- probably trade-ins or damages. I don't know who is right, but given the additional fact that the linked article is only about 38 screens, not hundreds, do you really want to default to the conclusion that the importer is guilty?

Is there evidence other than what intuition says Apple would allow/disallow over the entire market? Keep in mind, this very article is about one method they would use to prevent people importing original parts stripped from broken units.

(To find the 38 number, the article links to https://www.vice.com/en/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes-iphone-scr... -- see the 4th paragraph.)

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