Marshall Wins Counterfeit Headphone Case as Amazon Seller's Exhaustion Defence Fails
The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) in London has ruled for Marshall in a dispute over Major V headphones offered on Amazon UK. Deputy High Court Judge Charlotte May KC ruled on 30 October 2026 that the units the seller supplied were counterfeit. She also held that its fallback argument, that Marshall's rights had been exhausted, was unsupported by evidence. The citation is [2026] EWHC 2753 (IPEC).
The claimants were Marshall Amplification PLC, which holds UK registrations for MARSHALL (as a word and as a logo) and for MAJOR, and Marshall Group AB, its UK licensee. The defendant was a small UK company that sold the headphones through an Amazon storefront. Its lawyers withdrew before trial over unpaid fees and nobody attended for it, so the court went ahead in its absence under rule 39.3 of the Civil Procedure Rules.
How Marshall proved the goods were fake
Marshall relied on test purchases. When it compared them with genuine stock, the serial numbers on the purchased headphones did not appear in its internal product records. The company also listed a series of physical differences in both the headsets and the boxes.
The judge accepted that evidence. Once the goods were found to be counterfeit, the main claim followed under section 10(1) of the UK's 1994 trade mark statute. The seller had traded in Britain using signs that matched the registrations exactly, on the very goods the marks cover, and it had no consent. Each of the marks was infringed.
Why "they were genuine somewhere" was not enough
Exhaustion under section 12(1) of the 1994 Act stops a brand owner from controlling the resale of a particular item once it has been put on the UK or EEA market by the owner or with the owner's consent. The defendant argued, in substance, that Marshall products are widely sold through resellers and retailers, so the goods it stocked must have come from that legitimate channel.
The court held that this did not discharge the burden. Exhaustion attaches to specific goods, not to a product line. A seller who invokes it has to show that the very units it sold were placed on the relevant market by the rights holder or with its clear consent. General evidence that genuine Major V headphones circulate in Britain does not prove anything about where these particular units came from. Because the counterfeiting finding and the failure of the exhaustion defence were each enough to decide the case, the judge did not rule on Marshall's alternative claim under section 10(2), the separate section 12(2) point, or the passing-off claim. The form of the final order was left for a later stage.
What it means for marketplace sellers
The judgment does not create new law, but it is a useful reminder of how evidence shapes these disputes. Resellers on large platforms often buy stock through intermediaries and assume the goods are genuine and lawfully sourced. If the brand owner then shows that serial numbers do not match its records, the seller needs paperwork that traces each batch back to an authorised first sale. A supplier's word, or the fact that the brand is easy to find in shops, will not do that job.
For brand owners, the case shows that a well-documented test purchase still wins cases. Serial-number checks against internal databases and side-by-side comparisons of the product and packaging gave the court firm ground, even with no defendant in the room to cross-examine. The court also noted that an absent party can apply to set aside a judgment under CPR 39.3(3), so claimants should keep their evidence in good order after trial.
An Indonesian angle
Indonesia's Law No. 20 of 2016 on Marks and Geographical Indications gives the registered owner the exclusive right to use the mark. The UK burden-of-proof reasoning does not carry across directly, because Indonesian courts have their own approach to parallel imports and resale. Still, the practical lesson applies to Indonesian e-commerce sellers of imported branded electronics. If a brand owner challenges your stock, invoices and distributor documents that tie each item to an authorised source will matter far more than a general claim that the products are original. For brand owners, careful test buys and records of product codes are the groundwork for a complaint to a platform, to DJKI, or to a commercial court.
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