Amazon rebukes AAFA’s Notorious Markets submission
Amazon has defended its anti-counterfeiting measures after the American Apparel and Footwear Association’s ( AAFA) recommended that several Amazon stores be included on the Office of the United States Trade Representative’s ( USTR) Notorious Markets list.
In a letter published yesterday, October 15, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, countered the AAFA’s submission, arguing that many of the association’s members “refused” to use the marketplace’s anti-counterfeiting tools.
The Notorious Markets list identifies foreign physical and online marketplaces that purportedly engage in and facilitate copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.
“However, when brands refuse to use the tools that Amazon makes available to them, offer only anonymous criticism that is directly refuted by the available data, or conflate concerns about counterfeits with questions like the ‘unauthorised’ distribution of authentic products, the shared goal of combating counterfeiting is undermined rather than enhanced,” Huseman said.
Earlier this month, the AAFA included several foreign domains owned and operated by Amazon in its submission to the list.
Among the Amazon-owned online marketplaces identified by its member companies, the AAFA listed amazon.co.uk (UK), amazon.ca (Canada), and amazon.de (Germany) for the second year in a row.
As reported by WIPR, the announcement also added amazon.fr (France) and amazon.in (India) for the first time.
India’s inclusion ‘unfair’
In response, Amazon’s Huseman said the AAFA has recommended Amazon’s India store for inclusion on the 2019 Notorious Markets List, despite not having filed “a single notice” of suspected counterfeits for Amazon’s India store in the past six months.
Huseman said the company views counterfeiting as an “existential threat”.
“That is why we go well beyond our legal obligations and invest heavily in proactive efforts to prevent counterfeits from ever reaching our stores. In 2018 alone, we invested over $400 million in personnel and employed over 5,000 employees to fight fraud and abuse (including counterfeiting) in our stores,” said Huseman.
These measures include the marketplace’s Brand Registry, through which brands gain access to tools which use machine learning to predict infringement.
Additionally, Amazon offers a product serialisation service which helps eliminate counterfeits on enrolled products.
Those codes allow Amazon, other retailers, law enforcement, and customers to determine the authenticity of each individual unit of that product in the industry supply chain, by scanning the codes with a mobile app.
“We recognise these tools are not perfect and we work hard to continuously improve them based on feedback from rights owners, selling partners, and regulators,” Huseman admitted.
He added, “However, despite Amazon’s best efforts to engage with the AAFA and collaborate with its members to effectively prevent the sale of counterfeits, many of its member brands have not adopted Amazon’s brand protection tools”.
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