As the most successful online marketplace worldwide, Amazon has to face, more than many of its competitors, the issue of individuals or organisations set on exploiting intellectual property rights duly registered by third parties in order to profit unlawfully from them. To limit this phenomenon, the company takes part in numerous national and international initiatives supporting the fight against counterfeiting, such as the Memorandums of Understanding promoted by the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC)[1] and by the European Commission[2]: these agreements aim to foster collaboration and coordination between online marketplaces, brand owners and IP providers. In parallel, over the years Amazon has developed various proactive and reactive analysis and enforcement systems.
COMPLAINT FORM
First of all, for individual cases of suspected counterfeiting, Amazon allows reports (complaints) to be submitted through a dedicated online form, specific to each national platform[3]; since sellers often guarantee shipping to several countries, listings offering counterfeit products are likely to be present on several platforms at the same time: consequently, the operation will need to be repeated for each of them.
For your reports to be accepted by the platform, a number of requirements must be met:
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Identification of the user as the brand owner or as an agent authorised by the latter to act in its name and on its behalf is required;
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Next, you provide the details of the intellectual property right alleged to be infringed (type of right, registration number, issuing office, etc.);
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Finally, you enter the links to the listings believed to infringe IP rights, together with a brief description of the infringement found.
Usually, the platform's IP department is quick to assess complaints and, if the alleged infringements are confirmed, proceeds to remove the unlawful content within 24-48 hours.
AMAZON BRAND REGISTRY
In addition to the form-based enforcement system, in 2017 Amazon launched the Brand Registry programme[4], currently active in 20 countries (including the United States, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan): enrolled brand owners can use a dedicated dashboard where they register their trade mark registrations and submit requests for the removal of listings that offer counterfeit products. The main advantage lies in the ability to operate centrally across all national marketplaces (provided, of course, that you hold valid titles for the various jurisdictions and have registered them on the platform) and to consult a detailed history of your actions. At the same time, participation in the programme allows Amazon to increase the effectiveness of its proactive enforcement activities related to the brand in question.
AMAZON PROJECT ZERO
Finally, there is a further level of collaboration, reserved for those Brand Registry members who, in the six months preceding their application, managed to maintain a success rate for their reports (acceptance rate) of at least 90% of the total. Launched in 2019, the Amazon Project Zero[5] offering is built around three main tools:
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An advanced proactive monitoring and enforcement system run by the platform, based on machine learning technologies;
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An exclusive enforcement platform, through which the brand owner can search for and directly remove counterfeit listings (subject to obligations of accuracy and good faith in the activity);
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Amazon's application of a unique code to each product enrolled in the programme, so as to simplify the detection of any counterfeit products before they are delivered to the customer.
The variety of anti-counterfeiting tools made available by Amazon ensures a high level of effectiveness in identifying and countering unlawful activities that, if ignored, can cause serious damage in terms of revenue and brand reputation. However, the complexity of many infringing actions and the changing strategies devised by counterfeiters require constant monitoring and deep specialist knowledge, in order to prevent and defuse situations that could be very damaging to the integrity of a brand.
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[1] “IACC and Amazon Initiate New Brand Engagement Program”, https://www.iacc.org/media/iacc-and-amazon-initiate-new-brand-engagement-program, IACC, last accessed 12/04/2021
[2] Industry-led initiative to fight counterfeiting gets new boost”, European Commission, https://ec.europa.eu/growth/content/industry-led-initiative-fight-counterfeiting-gets-new-boost_en, 01/03/2019, last accessed 12/04/2021
[3] “Report Infringement”, https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement, last accessed 12/04/2021
[4] “Amazon Brand Registry”, https://brandservices.amazon.com/brandregistry, last accessed 12/04/2021
[5] “Amazon Project Zero” https://brandservices.amazon.com/projectzero, last accessed 12/04/2021