The bag had been bought on a well-known marketplace. Not an improvised profile, nor a private sale on a social network, but a structured platform with an in-house authentication service. It arrived complete with accessories and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by the platform itself.
It had passed every check. The client, after all, had not bought blind: she had done exactly what everyone is advised to do, namely turn to a channel that verifies. And for that verification she had also paid.
The price, 1,380 euros, was consistent with the model and with the declared state of conservation. No element of the transaction, taken in isolation, should have raised suspicion.
The preliminary examination
At first glance the bag looked impeccable. Correct shape, correct colour, details apparently conforming. The Baguette has extremely recognisable proportions, and they were respected.
Had the analysis stopped at that level, the piece would have been declared authentic. Which is precisely what had already happened, twice.
The laboratory analysis
What a super fake means
The super fake is not born by imitating the bag. It is born by imitating the way the bag is verified.
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- Fendi Baguette Pink
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- Fendi Baguette Pink
The chronology, which is the most instructive part
Authentication is not an algorithm
What can actually be done
This is the point where the matter stops being technical and becomes legal. And those who find themselves in this situation almost always have no idea that they have tools available.
The contract is flawed at its root. Someone who buys a Fendi bag and receives a fake has not received a defective good: they have received a different thing altogether. Case law classifies this as aliud pro alio, one thing in place of another. This is not a defect in the goods sold, but a total breach of contract, with significant consequences starting from the time limits within which action can be taken, which are considerably longer than those provided for the ordinary warranty.
The guarantee of conformity. The Italian Consumer Code protects the buyer against a lack of conformity of the goods with what was agreed. An object sold as Fendi that is not Fendi meets the very definition of non-conforming goods.
The platform’s position. This is the most delicate profile and at the same time the most interesting. Platforms have traditionally presented themselves as neutral intermediaries, along hosting provider lines: they put seller and buyer in contact and are not answerable for what passes through. That neutrality, however, has stopped being automatic. In 2022, deciding Louboutin v. Amazon, the Court of Justice of the European Union stated a principle worth bearing in mind: where a platform presents offers in such a way that a reasonably well-informed user may perceive the marketplace itself as the seller, the platform may be directly liable for the trademark infringement.
And when a platform does not merely host the listing but authenticates the product, certifies the result and turns that certification into a selling point, the position of mere intermediary becomes hard to sustain. It is no longer carrying information produced by others: it is producing it.
This does not mean that every authentication error automatically generates liability. It means that the answer is by no means a foregone conclusion, that the platform’s general terms are not the last word, and that it is advisable to seek assistance before treating the sentence “the item meets the brand’s standards” as final.
You need evidence. None of these routes can be travelled with an opinion. They are travelled with an expert appraisal: a technical, reasoned document, drawn up by someone qualified to do so, setting out what was examined, by what method, and for what reasons that conclusion was reached. It is the difference between saying a bag looks fake and filing a document capable of holding up in adversarial proceedings.
The piece is now a problem for whoever holds it, too. A product bearing counterfeit marks does not become lawful by virtue of having been bought in good faith. It cannot be resold and it cannot be transferred to third parties. Putting it back into circulation, even just to recoup the money spent, moves whoever does so to the other side of the table.
