Trade Me does not allow counterfeit or fake goods to be listed on the site for sale. We’ve published this Intellectual Property Rights Guide to explain what we mean.

Apple products are very popular consumer items at the moment and unfortunately that popularity has attracted a lot of the wrong kind of attention.

Trade Me thus has an Apple products policy where you can't sell MP3/MP4 players, touch phones and tablet PCs that could easily be mistaken for Apple products.

New Zealand law prohibits the sale of items that breach other people's intellectual property rights, no matter what the description says. So rather than have anyone get in trouble, we simply do not allow the sale of items that could be easily mistaken for Apple products.

Items that breach this policy will be removed at Trade Me’s discretion.

There are two important reasons for this:

Apple have copyright and patents over the designs to the iPhone, iPad and the iPod range so imitations of their products can't be sold (including Apple accessories).

Most importantly, some members have had really bad buying experiences where they thought they were getting a genuine Apple product but they received a mere look-a-like. Trade Me does not want situations like this to occur, we want our site to be trusted and safe.

For clarity, Android tablets and smart phones are welcome to be listed on Trade Me, as long as they aren't copies of other branded products or otherwise infringing intellectual property rights.

Apple products policy - no fakes and no look-a-likes