Estée Lauder defends itself against the sale of counterfeit products on Walmart's website. The American cosmetics giant has filed a lawsuit in California federal court after claiming that Walmart "selects" and "partners" with sellers and that they infringe several of its brands.
Apparently, the plaintiff company assures that Walmart has sold through third parties on its website products with packagings practically identical to products from brands like Estée Lauder, le Labo, Le Mer, Clinique, Aveda or Tom Ford. The company that has filed this lawsuit claims that Walmart is in charge of supervising the catalogs, the operations, the sales results and other information from the sellers to "ensure that they can offer the same high-quality experience to all Walmart.com customers."
Walmart tries to defend itself assuring that its policy is of "zero tolerance with counterfeit products or bad actors". During the last years, Walmart has been one of the companies that has most relied on integrating artificial intelligence in some of its processes, such as price reduction, streamlining delivery times, guaranteeing a faster order reception and expanding its product offering. Some years ago it also had to face a lawsuit with a ruling with an unfavorable result for Walmart: on this occasion against Vans. The fashion firm sued Walmart for counterfeit shoes on Walmaer's website.