Amazon Japan ordered to pay ¥35 mil for allowing listing of fakes
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.
© KYODO
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Today
3 hours ago
- Japan Today
70% of shops hit by massive Noto quake see no prospects of rebuilding
Retsuko Hirata displays products at her shop at a provisional facility in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, on June 3. Seventy percent of shops and restaurants currently operating from temporary facilities in the earthquake-hit Noto Peninsula in central Japan have no prospects of returning to their original locations, a Kyodo News survey showed. Nearly half of the 46 businesses facing difficulties cited a lack of funding as the main obstacle, amid falling customer numbers and sales following the magnitude-7.6 quake that struck Ishikawa Prefecture on New Year's Day last year. The survey was based on interviews conducted in early June with 64 of some 70 businesses operating in 15 makeshift spaces or buildings offered rent-free in the region. More than 40 percent of the respondents saw their shops completely destroyed in the disaster. Of the respondents, 40 said their income fell, with 33 of them citing fewer customers. Asked about their current concerns, 44 cited declines in customers and revenues, while 23 were worried about securing funds for restarting. Retsuko Hirata, who runs a shop selling Japanese sake and clothing items at an arcade in Wajima, said revenue has dropped by 20 percent from before the quake. "I am worried whether I can carry on my business as the number of tourists has dropped and the population continues to decline," she said. The region facing the Sea of Japan has been a popular tourist destination for fresh seafood, hot spring spas and traditional artwork, including lacquerware. The quake claimed more than 600 lives, including those who died from related health issues afterward, and caused over 160,000 houses to fully or partially collapse across Ishikawa, Niigata, Toyama and Fukui prefectures. © KYODO
Japan Today
3 hours ago
- Japan Today
Nissan mulls EV partnership with Taiwan's Foxconn: source
Nissan Motor Co is exploring a partnership with Taiwan's electronics giant Foxconn in the electric vehicle sector, a source familiar with the matter said Sunday. The plan under consideration would involve producing Foxconn's EVs at Nissan's signature Oppama plant near Tokyo, which had previously been eyed for closure, the source added. If realized, the deal is expected to keep the Oppama plant in operation, reversing earlier closure plans prompted by Nissan's financial difficulties. The partnership could also give momentum to the company's ongoing restructuring efforts. Foxconn has been accelerating its EV operations, having already agreed to supply EVs to Mitsubishi Motors Corp. The firm is also in talks with Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp over the delivery of electric buses. The Taiwanese company views a tie-up with Nissan as a potential catalyst to expand its footprint in the Japanese market, the source said. Nissan's main Oppama plant in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, is where the firm pioneered EV production. © KYODO
Japan Today
3 hours ago
- Japan Today
In reversal, Japan now wants rice farmers to produce more. Will it work?
By Kaori Kaneko For more than half a century, the Japanese government has encouraged its rice farmers to grow less of the crop so that prices of the national staple grain remained relatively high and steady. Now, under an ambitious agricultural policy announced this year, Tokyo is preparing for a reversal, envisaging a future of bountiful output that would secure the country's food security without sending prices into freefall and hurting its politically influential farmers. The new direction has taken on an unexpected urgency as Japanese grapple with a shortage of the all-important staple, which has prompted a historic spike in prices, a flood of imports, and interest from President Donald Trump, who has renewed pressure on Japan to buy U.S. rice as part of the allies' elusive trade deal. Kazuhachi Hosaka looks at his rice farm in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture. Image: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon It is a policy that many farmers like Kazuhachi Hosaka welcome in principle, but with trepidation because questions over how it would work in practice remain unanswered. The government is aiming to complete a roadmap by the middle of next year. "We'd want the government to make sure there's some kind of a safety net for producers," Hosaka said at his farm in the northern prefecture of Niigata. "It's easy enough to switch rice for feed or processed foods to staple rice. But tilling land for new paddies or switching from wheat or soybeans would require labour, machinery and all kinds of investments." This year, Hosaka allocated all but 10 hectares (25 acres) of his 180-hectare land for staple rice, reducing feed-use rice by 20 hectares given the attractive prices. But he worries that prices could plunge if Japan's overall production goes unchecked under the new policy, set to be implemented from the 2027 crop year. "I do feel conflicted," Hosaka said about the doubling of retail rice prices to above 4,000 yen for a 5kg bag this year in what has turned into a national crisis. "It's important that rice prices settle at levels acceptable to both producers and consumers," he said. Hosaka hopes prices would stabilise around 3,000 to 3,500 yen - a level Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also hopes would be palatable for voters. Supermarket prices fell for a fifth straight week, to 3,801 yen in the seven days to June 22, but were still 70% higher than the same period last year. Rice paddies in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture Image: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon NATIONAL CRISIS For Japanese people, rice is more than just a staple food. Cultivated in the country for more than 2,000 years, rice is considered sacred in the indigenous Shinto religion and is deeply ingrained in local tradition and culture. The Japanese are famously proud of their short-grain Japonica variety, protecting the market with trade barriers. So when rice turned into a luxury item this year, consumers fumed and policymakers - facing imminent elections - worried. With an eye on voters ahead of an upper house election on July 20, the government has been releasing emergency rice from its stockpile to sell for about 2,000 yen per 5 kg. Farmers - also traditionally an important voting bloc for Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party - were told it was a dire but necessary move to protect Japan's food security and prevent consumers from switching permanently away from homegrown rice. But for most of the past 50 years, Japan has poured its energy into doing the opposite: providing subsidies to farmers to grow crops other than staple rice so as to prevent oversupply and a fall in prices. That system backfired last year when the farm ministry misread supply from the heat-damaged 2023 harvest, resulting in a severe shortage in August. The ensuing surge in prices made Japan an anomaly against a fall in global prices, and exposed the risks of its approach. The new policy, if successful, would prevent a recurrence by allocating 350,000 tons of rice for export in 2030 - an eight-fold jump from 45,000 tons last year - that could be redirected to the domestic market in the event of a shortage, the government says. Some agricultural experts say the policy is unrealistic. The idea of selling expensive Japanese rice abroad is counterintuitive, especially when even Japan is importing record amounts of the grain despite the 341 yen per kg levy that had previously priced foreign products out of the market. Japanese have also acquired a taste for U.S. Calrose rice, while imports from Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam have also been popular with businesses and cost-conscious consumers. "Expensive rice might sell to niche markets, but getting that up to 350,000 tons would require price competitiveness, and there's a long way for that," said Kazunuki Ohizumi, professor emeritus at Miyagi University and an expert on agricultural management. The government aims to provide some form of support but also expects farmers to make their own efforts to consolidate, and make use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to lower production costs. Meanwhile, Hosaka said, prices of fertilizers, pesticides and fuel have shot up, sending production costs through the roof. "It's tough," he said. "The government has released quite a bit of stockpiled rice, so I'm very worried about prices falling even further." © Thomson Reuters 2025.
