In April 2025, the Tokyo District Court ordered Amazon Japan G.K. to pay ¥35 million (about $244,000) to a Kobe-based medical device distributor after finding that the platform failed to remove counterfeit pulse oximeter listings it had been notified about. The Amazon Japan counterfeit lawsuit produced one of the country’s clearest judicial statements yet on a marketplace’s duty to police third-party sellers, with the presiding judge describing Amazon’s handling of the reports as willful misconduct or, at minimum, gross negligence.
Who Sued and Over What Product
Two companies brought the case: Try and E, a manufacturer of pulse oximeters, and Excel Plan, the distributor of those devices. Pulse oximeters are small clip-on sensors that measure blood oxygen levels, and demand for them surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. That surge made them a target for counterfeiters.
Beginning around August 2021, Chinese vendors started listing counterfeit versions of Try and E’s oximeters on Amazon Japan at roughly one-tenth the price of the genuine products. The fakes closely resembled the originals and appeared on the same product page as the legitimate listings.
How Shared Listings Put the Fakes Next to the Real Products
Amazon Japan uses a system, sometimes called “piggyback” or “shared” listings, that aggregates multiple sellers of the same product onto a single page so shoppers can compare prices. In this case, the counterfeit oximeters were treated as the same product as the genuine Try and E devices. Shoppers saw dramatically cheaper options on the same page, and the court found this directly caused Excel Plan to lose sales.
Takahiro Fujii, president of Try and E, questioned the design itself. “If Amazon claims it lacks the resources to vet product authenticity despite having billions in revenue, doesn’t that mean the shared listing system itself is flawed from the start?” he said.
What Amazon Did After Being Notified
When Excel Plan reported the counterfeit listings, Amazon deleted the entire product page rather than removing only the infringing listings, wiping out the legitimate listings in the process. When Excel Plan protested, Amazon dismissed the complaint, citing problems with how the report had been submitted.
The situation then compounded. In September 2021, Amazon’s automated pricing system flagged the genuine oximeters as “excessively overpriced” and delisted them. The real products were being compared against counterfeit listings priced at a fraction of their cost, and the algorithm treated the authentic devices as the anomaly.
What the Court Ruled
Presiding Judge Yuko Shintani issued the ruling on April 25, 2025. The court held that Amazon Japan, as a platform operator that provides listing services and collects fees from sellers, had a contractual obligation to ensure fair sales opportunities for its merchants. That obligation extended to monitoring for and addressing fraudulent listings that interfere with legitimate sales.
Two failures drove the finding. Amazon did not conduct a proper investigation after the plaintiffs reported the counterfeits, and it removed all related product pages rather than selectively targeting the infringing ones. Judge Shintani found this conduct “indicative of willful misconduct, or at the very least, gross negligence.”
Amazon Japan had argued that its terms of service broadly disclaimed liability for seller losses, including lost profits. The court rejected the defense. Judge Shintani ruled that a blanket exemption clause in a standardized platform agreement “exceeds the bounds of what is socially acceptable” when applied to cases of intentional misconduct or gross negligence, and the clause was unenforceable here.
The court also dismissed Amazon’s argument that it could only recognize complaints submitted through its specific reporting channel. The system was not sufficiently publicized, the court found, and the plaintiffs’ direct notification should have been acknowledged regardless of format.
How the ¥35 Million Was Calculated
The plaintiffs originally sought ¥280 million in combined damages. The court assessed Excel Plan’s losses at ¥48 million and then applied a 30 percent reduction to account for declining market demand for pulse oximeters as the pandemic subsided. The final award was ¥35 million, paid exclusively to Excel Plan. Try and E, the manufacturer, did not receive a separate damages award.
Fujii said the outcome was mixed but necessary. “We also pursued this action because Amazon has shown no intention to take action on its own,” he said. “We believe that only through the pain of financial loss, through court-ordered compensation or administrative guidance, can Amazon be prompted to act.”
Is the Ruling Final?
No. Reports from the Meilin International Law Firm indicate the ruling has been appealed, so the ¥35 million award is not yet settled law.
How This Compares to U.S. Platform Liability Cases
The Tokyo court’s willingness to hold Amazon accountable as a platform operator tracks a direction U.S. courts have also moved, though under different legal theories. American courts historically treated online marketplaces as something like digital flea markets, shielding them from direct liability for third-party seller conduct. That treatment has weakened.
In Bolger v. Amazon.com, LLC, the California Court of Appeal ruled in 2020 that Amazon could be held strictly liable for a defective laptop battery sold by a third-party seller through the Fulfilled by Amazon program. The court found Amazon was a “direct link in the chain of distribution” because it took physical possession of the product, stored it, processed the payment, and shipped it in Amazon-branded packaging. The third-party seller had effectively vanished, leaving Amazon as the only member of the distribution chain available to the injured plaintiff.
In a 2021 Virginia case, Maglula v. Amazon, a court denied Amazon’s attempt to avoid secondary liability for trademark counterfeiting, finding genuine disputes about whether Amazon’s control over advertising, pricing, listing content, and fulfillment made it responsible for third-party sales.
The Japanese case rests on different ground. The Tokyo court reasoned from contractual duties and the invalidity of overbroad exemption clauses rather than strict products liability or trademark law. The underlying theme is the same across jurisdictions: courts are increasingly skeptical that a platform as large and involved as Amazon can be treated as a passive intermediary with no responsibility for what it sells alongside legitimate goods.