Brand Protection Report

Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where people can find and discover the widest possible selection of authentic goods. Today, we and our millions of selling partners – the vast majority of which are small and medium-sized businesses – serve hundreds of millions of customers worldwide.

We are proud to help these small businesses thrive and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in their local communities. We work hard to earn and maintain customer trust, and strictly prohibit the sale of counterfeit products. We constantly innovate to detect and prevent counterfeit products from reaching our customers.

Read our full report to learn more about our latest innovations.

Our latest innovations

Robust proactive controls

Our teams leverage the latest advances in computer vision, risk, and large language models to build automated solutions that proactively identify and remove infringing listings from our store. In 2023, through the use of cutting-edge technologies like computer vision and large language models, our teams have dramatically improved our ability to accurately detect complex visual IP infringements such as logos, shapes, and patterns. This includes infringements where logos are purposefully manipulated in an attempt to evade our detection systems. These advances allow Amazon to stay ahead of new and emerging bad actor tactics while scaling our protections, which systematically perform automated evaluations on tens of millions of product images each week.

Powerful tools for brands

Based on feedback received from brands, Amazon redesigned the Brand Registry homepage, making our most used features, like Report a Violation and Impact Dashboard, easier to access, while giving brands the ability to customize their homepage layout based on their needs. Brands can now find information regarding notice accuracy, enrollment status, and relevant help pages right on the homepage.

Holding bad actors accountable

In partnership with brands and law enforcement, we have been able to hold more bad actors accountable through civil litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement organizations— working to stop them from abusing our and other retailers’ stores across the industry in the future. While we believe we have made a great deal of progress, we remain committed to continued innovation and will not rest until we drive counterfeits to zero.

The global impact of brand protection

Brand Registry launched in 2017 and has expanded globally into the United States, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. We continuously innovate and expand to new markets to better serve our brands. In 2023, we hit a number of milestones due in part to the more than $1.2 billion invested and the over 15,000 employees who were dedicated to protecting customers, brands, selling partners, and our store from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse.
OVER

30%

Decrease in total valid notices of infringement submitted by brands since 2020, while the number of the products available for sale in Amazon's store continues to grow.
OVER

1.6B

Product units enrolled in Transparency have been authenticated as genuine through code scan verification, whether sold in Amazon’s store or elsewhere in the retail supply chain.
OVER

700K

Bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts stopped by Amazon in 2023, stopping them before they were able to list a single product for sale in our store.
OVER

99%

Of suspected infringing listings stopped by Amazon's proactive controls before a brand ever had to find and report them.
OVER

7M

Worldwide counterfeit products were identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of by Amazon in 2023, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the supply chain.
OVER

21K

Bad actors pursued by the Amazon Counterfeit Crime unit through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement.

Disrupting counterfeit networks across the globe

In addition to disrupting counterfeiters through civil suits, the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) works with law enforcement on joint enforcement and seizures across the globe, including taking action against bad actors, suppliers, logistics providers, social media influencers, fake invoice providers, and more. In 2023 Amazon:
  • Strengthened its cross-border anti-counterfeiting collaboration with brands and Chinese law enforcement in 2023, which led to more than 50 successful raid actions with more than 100 bad actors identified and detained for questioning, many of whom are manufacturers, suppliers, or upstream distributors of counterfeit products. This collaboration resulted in numerous criminal convictions, including fines and prison sentences.
  • Collaborated with London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit and Philips, the maker of Philips Sonicare toothbrushes, to identify and disrupt counterfeiting rings in the UK attempting to manufacture and sell counterfeit electric-toothbrush heads.
  • Worked with BMW to identify and target counterfeiters. Through this collaboration and the leveraging of Amazon's machine learning technology, Amazon and BMW filed a joint civil action in October 2023 to protect customers and hold counterfeiters accountable.
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