Walmart Inc. signage during the company’s listing at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesEstée Lauder sued Walmart in California federal court over allegations the big-box retailer sold counterfeit beauty products on its website and didn’t do enough to ensure only authorized and authentic merchandise was offered to consumers. Estée Lauder said it purchased, inspected or tested a number of products sold on Walmart.com that used the Le Labo, La Mer, Clinique, Aveda, Tom Ford and Estée Lauder trademarks but were determined to be fakes, according to the suit, filed Monday. The products include counterfeit versions of Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair serum, a Le Labo fragrance, a Clinique eye cream, a La Mer lotion, an Aveda hair brush and a Tom Ford fragrance. xemplars of the Estée Lauder Accused ProductsU.S. District Court ComplaintIt’s unclear when Estée Lauder bought and tested the products but the suit comes several months after CNBC published an investigation into counterfeit beauty products and fraud on Walmart.com. Two of the counterfeit products cited in CNBC’s investigation — Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair serum and Clinique Smart Clinical Repair Wrinkle Correcting Eye Cream — were also mentioned in Estée Lauder’s lawsuit. It’s unclear if the products cited in the suit are the same counterfeits CNBC provided to Estée Lauder. Estée Lauder and Walmart didn’t immediately return requests for comment. Exemplars of the Clinique Accused ProductsU.S. District Court ComplaintWhile the products were sold by third-party sellers on Walmart’s online marketplace, Estée Lauder said the company played an active role in facilitating those sales to shoppers in its suit. The legacy beauty company called Walmart’s conduct “extreme, outrageous, fraudulent … despicable and harmful.” The counterfeit products were promoted and advertised to shoppers on the platform, Estee Lauder’s trademarks were used in search engine optimization tools to drive traffic to the listings and Walmart profited from the sales, the complaint stated. Further, “a person shopping on Walmart.com would have reasonably believed that Walmart, and not third-party sellers, was the seller” of the item, which could have caused confusion among shoppers, the complaint states. At the heart of CNBC’s investigation into Walmart’s online marketplace was the steps the company took, or didn’t take, to vet its third-party sellers and the products they were offering to prevent fraud and the sale of fakes on the platform. Exemplars of the La Mer Accused Products.U.S. District Court ComplaintIn its complaint, Estée Lauder said Walmart promoted the “reputation and professionalism” of the sellers permitted to operate on the platform but said the retailer actually does “very little to ensure that only authorized and authentic products are available” for sale. “This is readily apparent given the [counterfeits] were permitted to be sold on Defendants’ website despite their stated careful selection process in who they choose as a Marketplace seller/partner,” the complaint states. “Accordingly, Defendants know or had reason to know that the sellers they partnered with and ‘regularly review[ed]’ were selling products which infringe upon the Estée Lauder Marks.” Walmart’s online marketplace has become a key part of its strategy to grow profit faster than sales and better compete against its longtime rival, Amazon. The rapid growth of the online platform helped fuel Walmart’s ascent to a $1 trillion market cap last week, putting it in an exclusive club made up almost entirely of technology companies. Howeve …
