Counterfeiting on online buying platforms

What is Counterfeiting?

Counterfeit products are fakes or unauthorized replicas of the real product.  These products are produced with the intentionof taking advantage of the superior value of the original product.

The ecommerce industry has seen tremendous growth over the last few years as online shopping has become quite popular among the Internet savvy younger generation. But for online shoppers the sale of counterfeit products remains a huge problem. Various surveys have proven that a third of ecommerce customers are getting fake products.

What are the Indicators to spot Counterfeit Goods?

Price:

Price is considered to be the biggest indicator of how to spot counterfeit goods. The price of a counterfeit item is way below the market value of the original product, sold by an independent seller at a discount of 60-80% because the inferior material used by these fraudsters to create these replicas cost them next to nothing to produce and market these products.

A major indicator of a counterfeit product is that it costs a fraction of the price of the genuine article and “appears” to be identical.

An untrusted website:

Most of the consumers will turn to other third-party sites or marketplaces to find the best deals When they can’t find an agreeable price for a product on a brand’s original website. Because of this, online marketplaces have become a centre for counterfeit sellers, to sell their products to the consumers by undercutting the prices of the original items. Where the product or item is being sold is another key sign of counterfeiting.

If the seller website is not famous one can paste the web address into domain checking sites to find out where the seller or company is located because if may be a concern if the address is not mentioned.

Also, if the websitehas any grammatical or spelling errors especially in the product information then it should sound alarm bells because mostly these people behind these fraudulent sites don’t pay attention to such details. They may even try to fool the buyers by changing the spelling of a well-known brand.

To prevent this and ensure security and quality of product, one should directly from a brand’s website

Customer reviews

Reviews of the customer on independent platforms help shoppers ascertain the validity of a certain seller and/or marketplace online.

Country

Several research projects state that China is the “engine of the global counterfeiting industry” exporting 72% of the counterfeit goods currently in circulation. Turkey, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia are also one of the leading exporters. Checking where the product is coming from or where the seller is based should be taken into account.

Imagery

Themain issue is that counterfeit goods can quite often appear to be authentic and hence consumers shopping online need to carefully check the details.

When purchasing products from online marketplaces, the consumers should compare it with the same product on the original website which will reveal any inconsistencies in the workmanship or detail.

Item description

An area which the fraudsters often neglect is the description of an item. Instances where the buyers are uncertain of a seller or website they should always check the product description and cross-referencing it with the legitimate product to spot any deviations.Things like them offering a significant discount or if the seller is based in one of the main counterfeit-producing countries as mentioned above should also be taken into consideration.

How to Avoid Getting Duped on platforms like Amazon, Flipkart etc?

1. Know who's selling the product - If the product is not coming from the retailer, look up the seller and where is he operating from.
2. Spot the fake reviews – Too many positive or 5 stars review within a short period of time can be suspicious.
3. Look into shipping logistics - Another red flag waves in the form of extra-long ship times, especially on Amazon where third-party sellers don't see their sales in their bank accounts for fourteen days. A new vendor with fake merchandise has to maintain their account for at least two weeks, so they'll schedule shipping time for longer than the Amazon processing time to prevent consumer complaints.
4. Examine product photos as photos can easily be copy pasted from google
5. Watch out for unrealistic deals - If the pricing looks too good to be true, it probably is.
6. Inspect the product for any suspect packaging - Packaging should include all the retail packaging for new products, such as manuals or printed materials, and UPC barcodes.

How is Amazon dealing with Counterfeiting?

Amazons Counterfeiting Policy:

“Amazon strictly prohibits the sale of counterfeit products and we invest heavily in both funds and company energy to ensure our policy is followed. We investigate any claim of counterfeit thoroughly, including removing the item, permanently removing the bad actor, pursuing legal action or working with law enforcement as appropriate.”

If a customer makes a purchase from Amazon or a selling partner, and the product doesn’t arrive or isn’t as advertised, they can contact customer support for a full refund.

Amazon recently launched ‘Project Zero’, one of several efforts to reduce the number of counterfeit goods sold on its site. Project Zero uses the combined strengths of Amazon and brands to remove counterfeits.

The tools used by Amazon are:

Automated protections

Powered by Amazon’s machine learning, automated protections continuously scan all the stores and proactively remove suspected counterfeits. To look for such counterfeits amazon scans over 5 billion daily listing update attempts on basis of the key data points (e.g., trademarks, logos, etc.) provided by the original brands.

Self-service counterfeit removal

Brands now have the unprecedented ability to remove counterfeit listings from the stores of Amazon themselves using this new self-service tool. Amazon uses this data to strengthen the automated protections to better catch potential counterfeit listings proactively in the future.

Product serialization

A unique code on every unit they manufacture for an enrolled product is applied by the brands, allowing Amazon to scan and confirm the authenticity of every one of those products purchased in Amazon’s stores. With this service, Amazon detects and stops counterfeiting for every product unit before it reaches a customer.

How is Alibaba fighting againstCounterfeiting?

China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has been making a significant push to fight against online counterfeiters in recent times.

Alibaba has developed a web-based IP Protection Platform (IPP) to provide a one-stop and efficient IP protection resource to rights holders. Alibaba offers the members a dedicated communication channel to improve their understanding and utilization of IPP as well as Good Faith Program participation, which helps rights holders to address various IP infringement issues most effectively.

The Good-faith Takedown Mechanism is a mechanism that is built based on mutual trust between Alibaba and intellectual property rights (IPR) complainants (including IPR owners, their agents or representatives, etc.) which aims to assist IPR complainants in protecting and enforcing their intellectual property rights on Alibaba Intellectual Property Protection Platform (“IPP Platform”).

In mid-2017, Alibaba came up with an Express Intellectual Property Protection program that allows brands and retailers to report counterfeit goods. According to Alibaba, the joint initiative has proved efficient in protecting the rights of the owners.

A Big Data Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance was announced by the Alibaba Group which uses big data in order to end the sale of counterfeit goods on the ecommerce giant's online platform. To promote a safe and healthy global ecommerce ecosystem where brands are protected from "IP pirates” this alliance aims to pool resources and increase collaboration where these brands and other members of the alliance have committed to share their expertise on IP authentication and anti-counterfeiting data with Alibaba in return.

Big-name luxury brands such as Valentino, Estee Lauder and Shiseido have joined this alliance. According to Alibaba, they are now able to proactively detect and remove illicit listings on the platform before rights holders send the takedown requests by applying the latest technology such as Blockchain and big data analytics. Last year, they proactively removed 27 times more listings than were processed as a result of requests from rights holders, with 97 percent of all proactive takedowns occurring before a single sale occurred. Local heavyweights like Huawei, and Samsung are already on board, this 20 member-strong alliance receives support from not only government bodies and law enforcement agencies in China, but also receives strong support from brands, trade associations, intellectual property experts, and regulators.

With the robust data capabilities, Alibaba is confident the alliance will accelerate the digital transformation in this global fight against counterfeits.

There are more than 1 billion product listings across its platforms at any given time to which Alibaba’s monitoring system scans more than 10 million product listings per day.