YCD News—April 4, 2023 – Today, Amazon released its 2022 Brand Protection Report, the third year of its Brand Protection Report, highlighting its efforts to protect consumers, brands and third-party sellers from counterfeit goods. These efforts have contributed to increased reporting of cases and broader industry collaboration. At the same time, the report demonstrates how Amazon’s industry-leading technology and experts are successfully stopping bad actors from stocking counterfeit goods and making an impact beyond the Amazon Mall: In 2022, Amazon found, seized and properly disposed of more than 6 million counterfeit goods, thus preventing them from reaching consumers or being resold elsewhere in the global retail supply chain.
We are proud of Amazon’s achievements over the past year, especially as we continue to improve our technology to better detect and deter bad actors and invest more effort in case reporting and litigation,” said Dharmesh Mehta, global vice president of Amazon’s Seller Services team. Amazon appreciates the continued industry-wide collaboration and looks forward to continuing to innovate and collaborate to get counterfeits ‘cleaned up’.”
The Amazon Brand Protection Report highlights progress in four key areas: 1) strong and effective proactive protection measures, 2) powerful brand protection tools, 3) holding bad actors accountable, and 4) consumer education and rights protection.
Blocking bad actors from listing counterfeit goods: Strong seller verification, combined with improved machine learning-based technology, continues to prevent bad actors from creating new Amazon sales accounts. 2.5 million attempts in 2021 and 6 million attempts in 2020.
Expanded adoption of brand protection tools: Amazon continues to improve technology related to automated brand protection, working with brands that have completed the Amazon Brand Registry and reducing brand detection and reporting of infringement based on data provided by brands. 2022 saw increased adoption of Amazon’s brand protection tools by brands, while at the same time, brands that have completed the Amazon Brand The absolute number of valid infringement notices filed by brands that have registered decreased by more than 35 percent from the previous year.
Hold counterfeiters fully accountable and stop their abuse on Amazon.com and other retailer stores: Amazon’s efforts to identify and disrupt counterfeit organizations are working and having a positive impact. in 2022, Amazon’s global counterfeit teams prosecuted or reported more than 1,300 counterfeiters in the U.S., U.K., EU and China. Amazon continued to work with brands and law enforcement to not only stop bad actors, but also to trace upstream based on counterfeit leads, finding, seizing and properly disposing of more than 6 million counterfeit goods, thereby stopping them from being resold elsewhere in the retail supply chain.
Enhanced consumer education: Amazon partnered with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on a number of marketing campaigns to help consumers understand how to shop safely and ensure they are buying authentic products and are aware of the dangers of buying counterfeit goods. These campaigns reach more than 70 million U.S. consumers.
Amazon’s initiatives in China:
In China, Amazon’s Global Storefront business provides ongoing seller education and training to enhance sellers’ brand protection awareness and related skills. Sellers can understand and learn about Amazon brand protection tools, relevant regulations and policies in different countries and regions, Amazon related policies, daily operation and compliance knowledge through multiple channels such as seller platform, seller encyclopedia, Amazon Global Store official website, official WeChat public number and service number, Jitterbug number, and official live broadcast, so as to avoid operational risks.
Amazon actively participates in the formulation of IPR-related laws, norms and standards in China, and promotes the improvement of IPR protection rules for cross-border e-commerce; through joint cooperation and planning with central and local governments and industry associations, it conducts compliance training for Chinese foreign trade export enterprises, introduces Amazon’s global brand protection system and tools, and improves Chinese enterprises’ awareness and ability of IPR compliance operation; promotes the establishment of “Long-term mechanism for cross-platform IPR protection and governance on the Internet” to further strengthen cross-platform efforts to combat and prevent counterfeit products through in-depth cooperation with law enforcement departments, industry associations and brand rights holders, and to prompt all social parties to build and govern together.
In 2022, Amazon cooperated with relevant law enforcement departments across China to take more than 30 enforcement actions against multiple Chinese sellers of cross-border counterfeit products and their associated upstream counterfeiters, and successfully dismantled the involved gangs and counterfeit production and sales chains, involving different categories such as luxury goods, sportswear, auto accessories, digital electronics, outdoor products, jewelry, and many international and domestic famous brands.
Ÿ Amazon cooperated with Guangdong and Jiangxi public security authorities to successfully dismantle the three involved gangs and their counterfeit production and sales chains. Over 240,000 pieces of counterfeit goods, semi-finished products and counterfeit brand logos were seized, involving famous brands in different industries such as luxury goods, sportswear and auto parts. Among them, in the criminal case involving cross-border sale of infringing auto parts, over 130,000 counterfeit auto parts and counterfeit auto brand logos were seized on site, involving counterfeit BMW, Porsche, General Motors and other well-known auto brands, and cracked down on multiple upstream supply chains of the sellers of counterfeits, completely dismantling the criminal network of the counterfeiting and counterfeiting gang. In January this year, the Baiyun District People’s Court of Guangzhou City has formally issued criminal verdicts against four persons involved in the case.
Ÿ Amazon cooperated with Shanghai public security authorities to take enforcement actions against cross-border sellers of infringing cell phone backplates located in Shenzhen, Guangdong and Xiangtan, Hunan, and seized infringing cell phone backplates involving counterfeit Xiaomi and many other Chinese brands.
Ÿ Amazon cooperated with Shanghai police to crack a cross-border case of selling counterfeit jewelry and seized 4,000 pieces of jewelry counterfeiting the famous brand Pandora.
On Amazon, more Chinese sellers and brands are making significant progress in brand protection using Amazon’s brand protection tools::
JSAUX, a brand of innovative digital smart products going abroad
“After conducting Amazon brand registration, we feel that the number of infringements on our brand has been significantly reduced, which has greatly improved the security of our brand and the efficiency of our team. In the past six months, Amazon’s brand protection tools have helped our brand stop bad actors from creating new links, remove suspected infringing items, and block over 100,000 attempts to modify existing links. We have a 90%+ success rate in reporting infringement using the Report a Violation tool, which has had a greater impact on working together to maintain fairness and compliance in the marketplace. For key links, in order to reduce the operation of reporting, then use Transparency Transparency program to completely eliminate counterfeit goods followers, and look forward to forming a business closed loop of conversion and repurchase through its new features to enhance brand building from both pre-sales and post-sales perspectives, and strengthen interaction and communication with consumers.”
BALEAF, a sportswear brand going abroad
“We attach great importance to brand protection and have completed Amazon brand registration on all major Amazon sites, including North America, Europe, Japan and the UK. In the past year, we protected over 2.3 million products using the Transparency transparency program, blocked 227 attempts to post followers, and saw a significant reduction in bad reviews related to fake followers. Having gained the newly launched Transparency marker “Little Blue Label” on product detail pages has better enhanced consumer trust in our brand and products, and conversion rates for seasonal products have improved by over 10%.”
Bedsure, a home out brand
“Last year Bedsure joined the Transparency Transparency Program for the largest selling products in the North American market, which not only fundamentally solved the problem of products being maliciously followed and reduced customer complaints brought about by fake followers, but also better traceability of product quality issues through this tool, in addition to personalized page display through QR code landing page In addition, we have increased our linkage rate by 17%.”