A welcome advance in the ever-evolving fight against counterfeits sold online
Barcelona March 1st, 2019 – Laura Urquizu, CEO Red Points
Amazon yesterday announced its launch of Project Zero – a welcome milestone in the fight against counterfeiting in online marketplaces.
As Amazon mentioned in their annual report this year, counterfeits pose a large risk to the online marketplace itself and the companies who sell there. With the announcement of Project Zero, Amazon is once again acknowledging the massive challenge of fighting online counterfeits. At Red Points, we continuously work with our clients to enroll them in Amazon’s Brand Registry program (which is a requirement for joining Amazon Project Zero) and will encourage and support our clients to join the waiting list for Amazon Project Zero.
At Red Points, we’ve been protecting brands by detecting and removing counterfeits from marketplaces, like Amazon, for years and we have only seen the problem grow in both volume and spread. While Project Zero will undoubtedly have utility for businesses trying to protect their brand value and sales on Amazon, we know that counterfeiting is a systemic problem across ecommerce and is almost never confined to one marketplace. For example, in 2018 Amazon only accounted for 1.6% of all intellectual property infringements of our sportswear clients; the majority were found on other marketplaces and social media.
I personally believe that Amazon Project Zero will be a hugely useful tool to complement a company’s brand protection strategy. However, counterfeiters are a resourceful and agile group, and we find that they are able to respond to new challenges to their illicit business relatively quickly. In our experience, when policing methods improve counterfeiters will migrate their sales and marketing operations to other platforms. It is therefore critical for businesses to have full visibility of their brand presence across all channels and online locations. At Red Points, we are proud to offer the most comprehensive and holistic Brand Intelligence platform, providing our clients with the key data and insights they need to protect themselves and their businesses online.
Maintaining brand value is about controlling much more than one platform, it requires the involvement of distributors and online sellers, the control of your images and content, and obviously the removal of counterfeits. With this in mind, we always recommend that companies use whatever means they have at their disposal to maintain their brand image, and Amazon Project Zero brings us one step closer to fully protecting businesses who innovate and create. This announcement is an important milestone in the ever-evolving fight against counterfeits sold online, but the challenge is far from over.
