Amazon Refuses To Remove Counterfeit Products

April 15, 2020 - Los Angeles, CA – Amazon's policy claims it prohibits counterfeits; "Products offered for sale on Amazon must be authentic. The sale of counterfeit products is strictly prohibited."

In practice, as evidenced by a recent letter from Amazon’s Corporate Counsel, the company acts much differently.

As previously reported, over the past eight years, The Counterfeit Report, a global award-winning consumer advocate and industry watchdog, has removed over 90,300 counterfeits from Amazon websites at the request of brand-owners. Amazon was also notified of an additional 171,000 fraudulent and replica items. Yet, on April 10, 2020, Amazon notified The Counterfeit Report that "Amazon will no longer accept any notices of infringement" from The Counterfeit Report.

Amazon Corporate Counsel, Annasara Purcell, couched its rejection of counterfeit notifications as an "unacceptable abuse of Amazon's infringement reporting system." According to Amazon, a counterfeit claim requires that a trademark must be registered in each jurisdiction the infringing product is sold, irrespective of the fact that the bulk of counterfeit items are shipped from or sold by China sellers.

The reality is that all The Counterfeit Report’s clients have registered trademarks for their products, which are referenced and included in each infringement complaint, and reported in the very system and format Amazon designated for reporting.

Most importantly, trademark registration is not a legal requirement for trademark infringement, enforcement, or removal. The claim by Amazon that this is necessary is simply a brazen attempt to avoid doing the right thing; aggressive and persistent action to remove counterfeit merchandise from its websites.

Amazon is sheltering behind its false claim simply to continue facilitating and enabling counterfeits on its website. If Amazon were genuinely concerned about counterfeit items sold on its website, they would welcome reporting of counterfeits by any party, in any form, and then act to immediately remove those items from their websites, whenever and wherever the items are listed for sale. Instead, Amazon Counsel chose to lash out and undermine The Counterfeit Report, including sending letters to represented brand-owners notifying them infringement notices will be rejected.

Consumers and brand-owners continue to be real victims of Amazon's counterfeit, fraudulent, and replica product marketplace.

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