OnePlus Buds made its debut as the company’s first-ever pair of TWS earphones alongside the OnePlus Nord. They have a similarity to Apple AirPods, and what pair of TWS earbuds do they not have today? Many of them have a half-in-ear shape, and an AirPod-like stem. However, the US Customs and Border Protection Agency has confiscated thousands of OnePlus Buds and identified them in the US as falsified AirPods.

2.000 pairs of OnePlus Buds, amounting to about $400,000 (Rs. 2.9 crores) in the US, were confiscated and seized by the US Customs Department. This is really funny and even oneplus initially took it as a joke, asking the agency to return it in an official tweet. As it doubles down on its intervention against OnePlus Buds, the CBP, it seems, does not do well with jokes.

The organisation rules out the probability of a mistake on their part being the seizure. Instead, in an official statement to The Verge, it reported that the OnePlus Buds breach the trademark configuration of Apple AirPods. An import specialist for CBP concluded that “the topic earbuds tended to breach Apple’s trademark configuration.” The Cupertino giant is reported to have trademarks in place with the CBP for their earbuds brand. The same was used to seize OnePlus Buds at JFK Airport.

The biggest question that everyone asks for an answer is why are the OnePlus Buds subject to investigation when there is a free sale of AirPods copycat truckload on eBay , Amazon, or Wish in the US? The agency adds that the “seizure of the respective earbuds is unrelated to the photos or language on the box. A business does not need to place an Apple wordmark or design on its goods to infringe those marks.

Is this impacting U.S. selling of OnePlus Buds? No, the TWS earbuds continue to be on sale in the US and neither OnePlus nor Apple is currently making an official announcement. The latter also refused to take legal action against OnePlus or any other tech giant that launched TWS earbuds similar to AirPods. CBP appears to be taking a stern stand against the organisation in an embarrassing position to save face.