Amazon partners with US government to end the sale of counterfeit products

Amazon on Tuesday announced a joint operation with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), aimed at preventing counterfeit products from entering the United States. The partnership will use intelligence gathered from Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit, logistics company DHL and the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to proactively stop the sale of counterfeit goods.

“Operation Fulfilled Action” builds on Amazon’s dominant positioning as a distributor and marketplace for products. Due to the amount sold on Amazon’s various storefronts, IPR Center and Amazon have already shared information, even collaborating in a crackdown on COVID-19 fraud. This new operation, however, marks a longer-term partnership.

Prior to Amazon’s involvement, IPR Center’s focus on “securing the global supply chain” might not be familiar to the average person, but you’ve actually seen a bit of the Center work – the government warning that plays before every DVD and Blu-ray was created by the organization.

When it comes to counterfeit products, Amazon says it has already investigated and eliminated potentially fraudulent violators. A partnership with these new agencies should allow the company to go further and “stop counterfeits at the border, wherever the bad actors intend to offer them,” said Dharmesh Mehta , vice president of customer trust and partner support at Amazon.

Amazon’s more aggressive stance began in earnest with the launch of the Counterfeit Crimes Unit earlier this year, as part of a move by the company to proactively investigate sellers offering counterfeit products, rather than to delete them after the fact. Counterfeit products are a known problem in various Amazon marketplaces and the Counterfeit Crimes Unit has already taken legal action against some sellers this month for offering counterfeit products on the Amazon Marketplace and Instagram.

Due to the number of counterfeit products sold each year (worth $ 1.7 trillion in 2009), this joint operation may not have the reach to make a dent, but something is better than nothing. .