An author of the American magazine The Atlantic wrote an article about how he spent $925 on Amazon to buy a fake "Canada Goose":
"After I clicked to confirm the order, I received an email: My Canada Goose is being shipped from Singapore and will pass through Hong Kong, China. Aren't Canada Goose produced in Canada? Later I found out that the name of this merchant was not Canada Goose, but a store called Greg Adamserft. At that time, this online store had only three reviews, all five-star. A few weeks later, all were one-star bad reviews."
The editor found that many consumers have complained that the Canada Goose sold by this online store is fake.
The first mention of counterfeit goods in the annual report does not mean that Amazon was unaware of these situations before. "Anti-counterfeiting" has always been an important clause on the Amazon platform.
Amazon's anti-counterfeiting policy states:
If a merchant sells or provides counterfeit products, Amazon will immediately suspend or terminate the seller's account and destroy the counterfeit goods in the Amazon logistics center. The losses will be borne by the merchant. In addition, Amazon also encourages genuine property owners to report.
Last December, Amazon punished more than 20 second-hand booksellers and suspended their accounts for selling pirated textbooks. More importantly, this penalty was not due to consumer complaints, but Amazon's proactive investigation. This shows Amazon's current attitude towards counterfeit and shoddy goods.
Amazon's counterfeit problem has also attracted the attention of some large retail brands. The United States has an Apparel and Footwear Association that represents the interests of more than 1,000 brands and aims to protect the brands' reputation, intellectual property rights, and the interests of workers and consumers.
Last October, the American Apparel and Footwear Association recommended that the US government should include some third-party websites on the Amazon platform in the "Notorious Markets" list. A notorious market is a market where there is large-scale infringement of intellectual property rights.
The Apparel and Footwear Association has been in regular dialogue with Amazon in previous years. In May last year, some members of the association met with Amazon's relevant team to discuss Amazon's inadequate protection of intellectual property rights.
Although the Apparel and Footwear Association stated in its proposal that "Amazon has the ability and should be a leader in combating counterfeit and shoddy products," Amazon is annoyed that this may give Trump a "handle" to use against it. Trump has long believed that Amazon has monopoly problems and has occasionally "blasted" Amazon and its founder Bezos on social media, but until now, Trump's threats against Amazon have remained verbal.
Since last year, Amazon has also come up with some new ways to protect intellectual property rights. Transparency is one of them. The project uses a specially designed barcode to verify the authenticity of products. Merchants who use it first can use it for free for six months, and then each barcode will be charged between 1 cent and 5 cents. Fighting counterfeiting is also a business for Amazon.
