Amazon and US government agency team up to inspect counterfeits

Amazon is teaming up with a U.S. government watchdog group to conduct counterfeit inspections, the company said Tuesday, in its latest effort to fix a problem that has plagued the e-commerce platform for years.

The company will work with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, a task force overseen by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Service, to “analyze data and conduct targeted inspections aimed at preventing counterfeit goods from entering. in the US supply chain, ”Amazon said. All the evidence gathered during their inspections will be used to broaden ongoing investigations and to attack bad actors.

The initiative, called “Operation Fulfilled Action”, is led by Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit. The team was launched earlier this year and is made up of former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts who mine the site for insight and work with federal prosecutors.

Amazon’s marketplace, launched in 2000, now accounts for more than half of the company’s overall sales. Although it has been a key driver of Amazon’s overall business, it has also faced a number of issues related to counterfeits, as well as unsafe and expired products. Counterfeit products have been particularly damaging to Amazon’s relationships with certain brands, such as Nike and Birkenstock, which left Amazon following an increase in counterfeits.

The company has stepped up its efforts to stamp out counterfeits on the platform. It has taken counterfeiters to court, deployed various programs to seek out and detect sales of counterfeit products, and continues to block millions of accounts and lists of suspicious actors.