Nike is attempting to combat e-commerce sellers on global platforms who continue to sell unauthorized and unlicensed Swoosh merchandise using counterfeit and infringing versions of the company’s federally registered trademarks.

Last week in U.S. federal court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Nike filed its latest complaint against these unspecified groups that use Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Alibaba, Walmart.com, Wish.com, Temu, Etsy, and DHgate, often using false or inaccurate names and addresses for their e-commerce stores, to sell counterfeit Nike products. Through the lawsuit, Nike is seeking to “discover the full scope of infringement” by these groups and prevent the “rampant and flagrant listing of counterfeit (Nike) products on their platforms.

Many of the alleged counterfeiters reside in or operate out of the People’s Republic of China or other international jurisdictions with weak trademark enforcement systems, the complaint alleges. Additionally, these groups utilize sophisticated e-commerce stores so that they appear to be authorized online retailers, outlet stores or wholesalers, accepting payments in U.S. dollars or via Alipay, Amazon Pay or PayPal. Beside regularly moving financial transaction logs from U.S.-based account to offshore accounts outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system, these e-commerce store operators regularly communicate with one another through QQ.com chat rooms and other websites such as sellerdefense.cn and kuajingvs.com to seek advice on how to evade detection and stay up to date on pending litigation.

The Nike complaint charges these defendants with trademark infringement and counterfeiting and false designation of origin.