Amazon’s partnership with the US government’s National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center is a solid move in its fight against counterfeiting, but the e-commerce platform should go further to cut down on fakes, say brands.
Amazon and the IPR Center, which organises 23 federal and international agencies to coordinate the enforcement of US IP law, have shared information in the past, including to combat fraud related to COVID.
But on November 24, the organisations took their partnership a step further when they announced the launch of a new project called Operation Fulfilled Action.
As part of this project, Amazon and the IPR Center plan to analyse counterfeiter data and perform targeted inspections of suspected fakes to prevent counterfeits from entering the US supply chain.
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In-house reviews
Scott Piering, chief IP counsel at Spectrum Brands in Wisconsin, says Amazon’s partnership is a positive development because anything that helps strike off counterfeit sellers is good, and because the IPR Center is a good clearing house.
Julianne Bochinski, senior IP counsel at consumer goods company Conair in Connecticut, agrees, adding that the IPR Center is widely recognised for its good work in the anti-counterfeiting realm.
One of the reasons brands insist that every action to take down counterfeiters matters, including the launch of Operation Fulfilled Action, is because of the prevalence of counterfeits.
Cheryl Whitlock, senior trademark paralegal at electronics company Fluke in Washington, says brands are still playing catch-up on the fraudster issue. “It’s hard to make up ground when sometimes we’re so far under water dealing with counterfeits, especially on a marketplace as big as Amazon,” she says.
This partnership is the latest in a long line of moves Amazon has made to curtail the sale of fake products on its website.
Brands say the platform’s past efforts, including taking complaints about fraudsters more seriously and implementing the Brand Registry programme, have helped it better address counterfeits.
A spokesperson from Amazon says that in 2019 the company stopped 2.5 million selling accounts suspected to belong to bad actors before they published a listing for sale, and blocked more than 6 billion suspected bad listings before they were published.
But brands are still concerned about fraudsters making their way onto Amazon, and they note that the company should take additional steps to fight fakes, such as by sharing data on counterfeiters with other e-commerce platforms.
Brand loyalty
If Amazon’s new partnership is as effective as some of its past efforts to tackle counterfeits, it should continue to make brands happy.
Whitlock at Fluke says her company uses of a lot of Amazon’s tools, including the Brand Registry programme. She says this initiative, which allows brands to report suspected infringement and ensure product information displayed on detail pages is accurate, has helped her company address counterfeiting issues quickly.
Piering at Spectrum Brands is also happy with Amazon’s past efforts. He points to the company’s hire of Cristina Posa from the Department of Justice (DoJ) as one example of the dedication to fighting counterfeits.
Posa was previously senior counsel in the DoJ’s Criminal Division, where she focused on computer and IP crime. She is now director of Amazon’s counterfeit crimes unit, which the company launched in June.
Piering notes that when Amazon started addressing counterfeits, people felt it was just paying lip service. But when he contacts the platform now, he says, he gets the sense that Amazon is taking the issue seriously.
“You’re getting the feeling of commitment from them. They’re committed to try to work with us to eliminate those counterfeits,” he says.
Some sources say Amazon has done so well in this arena that brands should be much more concerned about the anti-counterfeiting policies of other platforms.
Mark Mutterperl, partner at law firm Zeisler in New York City, points out that Amazon, Alibaba, eBay and Walmart, all members of the IPR Center’s working group, received an award from the centre in November for their work in preventing the trafficking of counterfeit goods.
“We should be concerned about the companies that are not at the table, or merely paying lip service to counterfeiting,” he says. “Those of us engaged in anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy efforts should focus on the increasing dangers found across social media and chat applications,” he says.
Go the distance
Despite these successes, brands still run into counterfeiting challenges on Amazon, some of which can be attributed to the nature of the website.
Whitlock at Fluke points out that if her company puts up a listing for a product on Amazon, anyone can post an offer for the same item.
Most items have a single product page which the makers can use to sell the merchandise but which also link to independent sellers. If these parties are counterfeiters, the page may make the offering seem legitimate.
Whitlock says she doesn’t know how Amazon can change this issue because part of its business model is allowing people to sell on its website with ease.
But she adds that Amazon or brands could help by educating consumers about how Amazon’s platform works so they can avoid purchasing fakes.
Amazon has also given brands and consumers better access to seller data to crack down on counterfeits. In September, the company started displaying sellers’ business names and addresses on their profile pages.
But Piering at Spectrum Brands says he would like to see the e-commerce platform enhance this process because sellers can still list fake details. He says the website should follow the money and track seller financial information.
He adds that it’s important for everyone to act responsibly, and that includes brands. Companies need to ensure that they are not going after legitimate sellers, and there should be consequences for businesses that consistently do so such as no longer having the ability to make counterfeiting complaints against sellers, says Piering.
Piering would also like to see Amazon work with other platforms to create a central database that can be used to track infringers – because if a party is selling counterfeits on one website, it is probably doing so on others too. He says if he successfully petitions to have a counterfeiter taken off one platform, the seller should come off all of them.
Constant battle
One challenge for brands is that even as Amazon makes further strides to fight counterfeiters, fraudsters keep evolving.
Bochinski at Conair says one issue for her company has been bad actors copying the business’s products in every way but without mimicking the actual branding. These items are a problem for the company because they can still cause consumer confusion.
She sometimes files unfair competition claims against these companies to try to combat this activity.
Clearly, despite Amazon’s excellent efforts to fight off counterfeiters, a lot more needs to be done – and, if nothing else, brands, Amazon and government agencies will have to keep collaborating to effectively fight the war on fakes.
But considering how far the e-commerce platform has come in its efforts to remove fake products, brands are undoubtedly more confident than they once were that Amazon has their back and will keep making the anti-counterfeiting fight easier, even if it can’t stop it completely.
