Brand Protection Report
Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where people can find and discover the widest possible selection of authentic goods. Today, we and our millions of selling partners – the vast majority of whom are small and medium-sized businesses – serve hundreds of millions of customers worldwide.
We are proud to help these small businesses thrive and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in their local communities. We work hard to earn and maintain customer trust, and strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products. We constantly innovate to detect and prevent counterfeit products from reaching our customers.
Read our full report to find out more about our latest innovations.
We are proud to help these small businesses thrive and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in their local communities. We work hard to earn and maintain customer trust, and strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products. We constantly innovate to detect and prevent counterfeit products from reaching our customers.
Read our full report to find out more about our latest innovations.
Our latest innovations
Robust proactive controls
Our teams leverage the latest advances in computer vision, risk and large language models to build automated solutions that proactively identify and remove infringing listings from our store. In 2023, through the use of cutting-edge technologies such as computer vision and large language models, our teams have dramatically improved our ability to accurately detect complex visual IP infringements such as logos, shapes and patterns. This includes infringements where logos are purposefully manipulated in an attempt to evade our detection systems. These advances allow Amazon to stay ahead of new and emerging bad actor tactics while scaling our protections, which systematically perform automated evaluations on tens of millions of product images each week.
Powerful tools to protect brands
Based on feedback received from brands, Amazon redesigned the Brand Registry homepage, making our most used features – such as Report a Violation and Impact Dashboard – easier to access, while giving brands the ability to customise their homepage layout based on their needs. Brands can now find information regarding notice accuracy, enrolment status and relevant help pages right on the homepage.
Holding bad actors accountable
In partnership with brands and law enforcement, we have been able to hold more bad actors accountable via civil litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement organisations – working to stop them from abusing our and other retailers’ stores across the industry in the future. While we believe that we have made a great deal of progress, we remain committed to continued innovation and will not rest until we drive counterfeits to zero.
The global impact of brand protection
Brand Registry was launched in 2017 and has expanded globally into the United States, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. We continuously innovate and expand to new markets to better serve our brands. In 2023, we hit a number of milestones due in part to the more than $1.2 billion invested and the over 15,000 employees who were dedicated to protecting customers, brands, selling partners and our store from counterfeits, fraud and other forms of abuse.
30%+
Decrease in total valid notices of infringement submitted by brands since 2020, while the number of the products available for sale in Amazon’s store continues to grow.
1.6B+
Product units enrolled in Transparency have been authenticated as genuine via code scan verification, whether sold in Amazon’s store or elsewhere in the retail supply chain.
700K+
Bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts stopped by Amazon in 2023, stopping them before they were able to list a single product for sale in our store.
99%+
Of suspected infringing listings stopped by Amazon’s proactive controls before a brand ever had to find and report them.
7M+
Worldwide counterfeit products were identified, seized and appropriately disposed of by Amazon in 2023, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the supply chain.
21K+
Bad actors pursued by the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit via litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement.
Disrupting counterfeit networks across the globe
In addition to disrupting counterfeiters via civil suits, the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) works with law enforcement on joint enforcement and seizures across the globe, including taking action against bad actors, suppliers, logistics providers, social media influencers, fake invoice providers and more. In 2023 Amazon:
- Strengthened its cross-border anti-counterfeiting collaboration with brands and Chinese law enforcement in 2023, which led to more than 50 successful raid actions with more than 100 bad actors identified and detained for questioning, many of whom are manufacturers, suppliers or upstream distributors of counterfeit products. This collaboration resulted in numerous criminal convictions, including fines and prison sentences.
- Collaborated with London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit and Philips, the maker of Philips Sonicare toothbrushes, to identify and disrupt counterfeiting rings in the UK attempting to manufacture and sell counterfeit electric-toothbrush heads.
- Worked with BMW to identify and target counterfeiters. From this collaboration and the leveraging of Amazon’s machine learning technology, Amazon and BMW filed a joint civil action in October 2023 to protect customers and hold counterfeiters accountable.
SUCCESS STORIES
Things are different with the Amazon Patent Evaluation Express. It is a simple and affordable process with a clear end point that has been effective in enforcing our patent. APEX is a game changer for small businesses.
LG sees Transparency as a great way to ensure that consumers use genuine LG filters while protecting them from counterfeit products.
We are excited to see that Project Zero is expanding into new marketplaces. The programme has already had a very positive impact on our enforcement, and we are glad to see Amazon’s continued commitment to protecting our brand across the world.
We are proud of the work achieved together with the Amazon team to fight online counterfeiting over the last few years. Always open to new counterfeit case referrals, the Amazon team has consistently demonstrated a commitment to transparency, partnership and diligence to get results, however complex the issue.
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