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Is it legal to sell generic magsafe power adapters? magsafe is a type of charger made by Apple. I am a reseller and I have been selling these for quite some time. There are millions of them on ebay and amazon. I know little about law. I received an email from one of the sites i sell on today. Here it is:

We removed some of your listings because of a rights owner complaint about items that may infringe their intellectual property rights. These items may be inauthentic. Examples of these items are below:

Power Adapter 60W Magsafe charger For Apple MacBook Pro 13 Inch with US plugs

If you want to resolve this dispute, contact the rights owner:

Apple Inc. [email protected]

If resolved, ask the rights owner to contact us at________ to withdraw their complaint. Do not relist the items that caused the complaint until you resolve the dispute.

If the rights owner contacts us to withdraw their complaint, we will reinstate your listings. If we receive more complaints about your listings, we may not allow you to sell on _________

Please keep in mind that I did not make this listing. The product is already in the sites catalog. Nor did i claim to be an apple product or have apples logo . The listings brand says "generic" and "replacement for apple magsafe"

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  • This question comes close to asking for specific legal advice, which is against this site's rules: meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/221/…. Can you revise it? However, at first glance, the issue be how you list the product. If you're listing it as an "60W Magsafe charger," that's the specific name of an apple product and has numerous legal problems. If you list it as a charger that is comparable or comparable, you're less likely to get into trouble.
    – Mr_V
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 13:09
  • @Mr_V the issue is likely not only trademark, but also patent. Any charger that hooks up to the MacBook port is likely infringing. Changing its name doesn't matter.
    – user3851
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 14:15
  • @Dawn, You are quite right. However the real issue seems to be this questions is asking for specific legal advice; hence my reluctance to fully explain the intellectual property issues.
    – Mr_V
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 14:40

2 Answers 2

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The generics may be infringing an Apple patent.

https://www.google.com/patents/US7311526

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  • I appreciate your help and I will look at the link next
    – Samavi
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 3:48
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Magsafe is patented. It cannot be used by anyone other than Apple unless Apple has licensed it to that other company. As a rule, Apple does not license Magsafe.

The products are infringing on a patent and cannot legally be sold in countries where the patent is valid. The fact that other people do it doesn't mean that it's OK; while a company that doesn't enforce its trademarks runs a high risk of losing them, patents don't work that way.

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  • wow, ok. I'm taking any generic listings down. i didn't know this at all. A very bitter difficult customer reported me. That's real nice, take away my income to survive because i asked you to return the item before i applied a refund. I don't mean selling the chargers was my only income. The site can suspend me because of this infringement thing. The listing was in their catalog thats what I don't get. Why I'm getting in trouble. This is stress
    – Samavi
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 3:48
  • Well, taking faked power adapters that plug into 220 Volt out of the market may help someone literally survive. And I know the meaning of literally. Does your fake magsafe adapter have all the security features of the original, like no power when it's not plugged in?
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 12:04
  • @gnasher729 that line of questioning doesn't help answer the legal question. Whether these things are harmful doesn't change Apple's claim against their production.
    – user3851
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 14:41

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