Since 2021, Amazon has been publishing an annual brand protection report detailing how the company combats the trade in counterfeit products on its online platforms. According to the latest brand protection report on activities in 2024, the online retailer once again invested over a billion US dollars in brand protection, similar to last year. It also employed thousands of specialists to protect its platforms, customers, brands, and selling partners, including AI scientists, developers, and investigators.
The company highlights four key areas in their report: proactive actions to protect its marketplace, tools for brand owners, activities against bad actors, and efforts to educate customers.
When it comes to proactive stopping infringements, Amazon highlights its own Project Zero and extensive developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Amazon aims to use AI to improve proactive controls and automatically filter out infringing products. According to its own figures, Amazon has blocked 99% of suspected infringing listings before they could even be published. At the same time, Amazon says it has seen a decline of around 35% in reports of infringements that were deemed substantiated, since 2020.
As one of its tools for brand owners, Amazon points to its Transparency initiative and the respective application programming interface (API), which the company says simplifies product registration for brands. As part of this initiative, more than 2.5 billion products have already been verified as genuine, and the program has reportedly enrolled 88,000 brands worldwide.
In the area of enforcement, Amazon is active with its own Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU). According to the company, Amazon has pursued more than 24,000 suspected bad actors since 2020, through litigation and criminal referrals. In 2024 alone, Amazon has reportedly identified and removed more than 15 million counterfeit products before they could be sold.
Finally, Amazon also uses targeted communications and customer education to effectively combat counterfeiting and help consumers protect themselves. To this end, the US company also works with associations and authorities: For example, Amazon supports the International Trademark Association’s (INTA) Unreal Campaign, which aims to educate young consumers in particular about the risks of counterfeiting.
Despite these efforts, Amazon continues to face significant criticism. Just recently, the negative award Plagiarius was given to a copycat product sold on the online platform. While Amazon has apparently removed the product from its site, the online marketplace remains a platform used by fraudulent sellers.
