Peak Design claims that Amazon copied its Everyday Sling bag

Peak Design, a maker of fine bags and accessories, has a problem: Amazon seems to have copied its popular $ 99.95 Everyday Sling bag with its own $ 32.99 Amazon Basics Camera bag. It was even called Everyday Sling until the Peak Design video. Instead of doing something drastic, Peak Design decided to make a video about what customers “get” by purchasing the version from Amazon.

The video clearly presents the Peak case: the bags have similar shapes, with pockets, labels and handles in the same places. As someone who doesn’t know Peak Design bags, if I wasn’t paying attention or didn’t read “Peak Design” on the label, I would probably mix them up.

Image: Peak Design

Peak presents all of this with humor, but the evidence is surprisingly blatant, which makes Amazon’s apparent decision to change its Amazon Basics version from “Everyday Sling” to “Amazon Basics Camera Bag” all the more suspicious. There is even evidence: “Everyday Sling” is still at the URL for “Camera Bag”.

Peak Design is not the first smaller company to try to stand up to Amazon. When Allbirds discovered that Amazon was selling what appeared to be a fairly obvious clone of the Allbirds, the company’s CEO wrote a post on Medium criticizing Amazon, although he claimed to be “flattered” by the similarities between the shoes. Amazon’s copy didn’t stop there. The company has also been accused of cloning trunk organizers and seat cushions.

The whole trend served only to call attention to a possible antitrust issue that has long worried the company’s critics, as well as legislators and regulators. The basic problem: Amazon owns and operates its e-commerce platform and also runs an ever-growing list of internal brands that compete with Amazon’s own third-party marketers on that same platform.

Reducing competition is as simple, in theory, as seeing what is selling well, creating a similar and cheaper product, and then suggesting it to Amazon buyers. In fact, that same situation is at the heart of an European Union investigation into the company’s operations, which resulted in the European Commission accusing Amazon of “systematically” using data from sellers to unfairly compete with its own merchants in France and Germany in last november.

Amazon says it has a policy in place to prevent third-party data from being used for products, but reports of Wall Street Newspaper suggests that it still happened. How Vice notes, even former CEO Jeff Bezos was unable to confirm whether the policy was violated during the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation into Amazon’s monopoly status.

In the case of Peak Design, the company said in a statement to The Verge she believes that Amazon has actually infringed on her intellectual property, but has chosen to make the video to highlight the differences between the products and has no plans to take legal action now.

The ratings are currently disabled on the Amazon stock exchange because the company noticed “unusual review activity”. Looking at some of the most recent reviews, several of the lowest reviews have been left by customers who directly reference the Peak Design video. Taken with Amazon’s decision to change the product name, it appears that Peak Design has reached a limit.

The Verge contacted Amazon about Peak Design’s complaint and will update if we receive a response.