How marketplace sellers hide suspected infringement — and how detection adapts.

01

Why the target keeps moving

Keyword filters made direct brand-name listings easier to spot. Image recognition added another layer. Sellers adapted. The OECD records rights holders asking platforms to detect blurred logos, QR codes, and image fingerprints as well as keywords. The 2023 U.S. Notorious Markets review reports blurred logos, code words, and hidden links used to evade detection on DHgate.

This does not mean every unusual spelling, blurred image, or QR code is abusive. It means a detection programme must be able to combine weak signals, inspect context, and preserve what the buyer actually saw at the time of review.

02

The brand name moves out of the title

A seller can omit the exact mark from the searchable headline while leaving it in specifications, variation labels, the long description, an image, video, model number, or seller message. Other listings use deliberate misspellings, spaces, punctuation, lookalike characters, translations, abbreviations, or community code words. Some use phrases such as “dupe” or “inspired by”.

What we can counter: search every available listing field; normalise spacing, punctuation, and common character substitutions; include model names, collection terms, translations, and verified code words; then review the complete page and its variants.

Where the limit sits: a field that the marketplace does not expose cannot be searched from outside it. A code word is useful only after its meaning is connected to the product. Compatibility wording, comparative references, genuine resale, and descriptive use also require separate legal and factual review rather than automatic removal.

03

The logo is blurred, cropped, covered, or moved

Sellers may cover a logo with a shape or sticker, crop it out, lower its contrast, mirror or rotate the photograph, show only unbranded angles, or place the revealing image deeper in the gallery. A listing can also reuse a brand's product photography after removing the most obvious mark.

What we can counter: compare the full image set rather than the thumbnail; use logo and text recognition alongside perceptual image similarity; look for recurring backgrounds, crops, packaging, and catalogue composition; and preserve the exact image shown for each variant.

Where the limit sits: image similarity is not the same as product authenticity or legal infringement. A generic photograph with no protected expression, mark, design, or reliable link to the goods may support monitoring, but not a defensible complaint by itself.

04

Removing the logo does not necessarily remove every right

A product may remain recognisable from its shape, configuration, pattern, ornamentation, or packaging. WIPO explains that an industrial design can cover three-dimensional features such as shape and two-dimensional features such as patterns, lines, or colour. In the United States, a design patent protects the way an article looks rather than how it works.

What we can counter: where the brand has a suitable, in-force registration or another applicable right, compare the listing against the protected views and prepare a design-based complaint even when the word mark is absent.

Where the limit sits: design rights are territorial, time-limited, and defined by their protected scope. Functional features are not automatically covered by design protection. A familiar silhouette or “lookalike” impression is therefore not enough on its own; the right, territory, product, and marketplace complaint route must align.

05

The visible listing is only a decoy

UNICRI describes hidden links as marketplace pages that appear to sell a generic or unrelated product while buyers are directed from social media, discussion channels, or closed groups to use the page to order a different, allegedly counterfeit item. The connection may depend on a code, shared album, QR code, private message, livestream, or short-lived instruction.

What we can counter: preserve the referring post and the marketplace page together; record codes, timestamps, variants, seller identity, checkout instructions, and changes over time; follow public referral paths; and use a controlled test purchase when it is lawful, proportionate, and authorised.

Where the limit sits: a harmless-looking checkout page cannot responsibly be reported as counterfeit merely because it feels suspicious. If the external instruction is private, deleted, geo-blocked, or unavailable, the missing connection may prevent a supported complaint. Evidence from a delivered product may require a test purchase and chain-of-custody process outside ordinary listing review.

06

The offer returns with a new wrapper

After a removal, a seller can republish under another URL, account, translation, category, price, variation structure, or edited image set. OECD reporting notes that platforms use risk indicators and linked-account analysis to address repeat infringers, but also identifies repeat infringement as an area where further cooperation is needed.

What we can counter: retain fingerprints from the removed page — seller details, image families, wording, model and SKU references, price bands, shipping origin, store patterns, and reappearance timing — and use them to seed the next scan.

Where the limit sits: shared images or similar timing do not conclusively prove that two accounts have the same operator. Platforms can see account and payment data that an external reviewer cannot. Seller linkage should be presented as confirmed, probable, or unresolved according to the evidence available.

07

What monitoring cannot honestly promise

• finding content inside inaccessible private chats, closed groups, or unexposed marketplace fields;
• proving what will be delivered when the public listing and referral path contain no connecting evidence;
• treating every unbranded lookalike, compatibility reference, “dupe”, or low-priced offer as unlawful;
• asserting a design right outside its territory, term, product scope, or protected features;
• conclusively identifying the person behind related seller accounts without platform-held data;
• guaranteeing removal, account suspension, or permanent non-return after a complaint.

These are not reasons to stop monitoring. They are reasons to label the evidence correctly, choose the right complaint basis, and escalate only when the next evidentiary step is justified.

08

Every verified trick becomes a new search route

Bastion treats seller evasion as a changing pattern, not a fixed checklist. When a new method is verified in the monitored scope, we preserve the example, identify the signal it left behind, add that signal to the next search pass, and review related listings and sellers for the same pattern.

The rule is deliberately evidence-led: we adapt the detection method as sellers adapt their presentation, while keeping the complaint standard tied to the rights, facts, and platform rules that apply to each listing.