Amazon released its third annual Brand Protection Report this week, where the ecommerce giant attempted to show continued progress toward decreasing the number of counterfeit items sold on its site.
According to the report, Amazon identified, seized, and disposed of more than 6 million counterfeit products in 2022 before they could reach customers or be sold elsewhere in the global supply chain.
“Reflecting on the past year, I am encouraged by our team’s continued progress in raising the bar in areas critical to brand protection,” said Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of Amazon’s Worldwide Selling Partner Services. “Together, we have driven powerful and highly effective proactive efforts to protect our store. We have provided and innovated upon industry leading tools that enable rights owners to partner with us to better protect their brands. We have also made significant advances in holding bad actors accountable and improved customer protection and education.”
Highlights from the report include:
- Amazon innovations in seller vetting are deterring bad actors from attempting to create new selling accounts. Seller verification, including connecting one-on-one with prospective sellers through video chat, coupled with continued advancements in machine learning-based detection, are deterring bad actors from attempting to create new Amazon selling accounts. In 2022, the brand stopped over 800,000 attempts to create new selling accounts, preventing bad actors from publishing a single product for sale—down from 2.5 million attempts in 2021, and 6 million attempts in 2020.
- While the number of stores and products available for sale have continued to grow, the number of valid notices of infringement submitted by brands has significantly decreased. Amazon said it continued improving its automated protection technologies, which leverage its partnership with brands enrolled in Brand Registry and the data they provide. This reduced the need for brands to find and report infringements. In 2022, adoption of the brand protection programs continued to grow—and, at the same time, the number of valid notices of infringement filed by brands in Brand Registry decreased by over 35 percent.
- In partnership with brands and law enforcement, Amazon has been able to hold more counterfeiters accountable. In 2022, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit sued or referred for investigation over 1,300 criminals in the US, UK, EU, and China. The company continued to partner with brands and law enforcement to stop these bad actors, and worked to go upstream from the counterfeit signals it detected to identify, seize, and appropriately dispose of over 6 million counterfeit products.
- Amazon has educated consumers about the harm and dangers of counterfeit products. In partnership with the US Chamber of Commerce and US Customs and Border Protection, Amazon built marketing campaigns that helped educate consumers about how to shop safely and ensure they were purchasing authentic products while understanding the harm and dangers of purchasing counterfeits. These campaigns reached over 70 million consumers in the US.
“We are proud of the progress we made this past year, and we will continue to innovate until we drive the number of counterfeits in our store to zero,” Mehta said. “We also appreciate the growing industry-wide partnership and collaboration in the fight against counterfeits. While the industry still has a long way to go in driving the right public and private sector partnership, we are excited about our progress and what we can do together to hold bad actors accountable and ensure the entire industry is rid of counterfeits.”