Amazon Collaborated with IACC to Combat Counterfeit in Online Market

The flood of counterfeit products in e-Commerce markets hampers business growth and harms consumers. For that reason, the e-Commerce giant from the United States, Amazon, agreed to collaborate with the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) on April 26, the day of World Intellectual Property (IP).

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by IACC president, Bob Barchiesi, and vice president of customer and brand protection Amazon, Dharmesh Mehta. With this MoU, the IACC and Amazon will work together to assess potential claims of infringement, reporting, and enforcement against counterfeiting. The collaboration aims to conjoin information, resources, and expertise of two organizations to protect consumers and patent holders.

Quoted from a press release on the IACC website, Dharmesh Mehta said, “At Amazon, we work very hard every day to earn and keep customer trusts, and that includes ensuring they buy and receive authentic products.”

“We’ve made tremendous progress in protecting customers and brands, particularly through our proactive efforts and collaboration with rights holders in the Brand Registry. But, there’s always more to do and this effort with the IACC will help us learn and continue to improve our systems,” he continued.

Brand Registry is an Amazon program designed to provide product control in Amazon for brand owners. Over 40,000 brands in the world are registered in the Brand Registry and Amazon investigates and acts on over 95% of potential infringement reports received by the Brand Registry within eight hours.

Prior to Amazon, the Chinese e-Commerce giant, Alibaba has taken the same step to protect brand owners and consumers by establishing Alibaba Group Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance (AACA) with more than 20 international brands incorporated in it.

The Internet brings the counterfeit issue to the higher level because there are no more barriers of distance and time for the product to infiltrate the market. The spread of counterfeit products is wider, faster and easier. Before internet era, a brand might be able to solve its own counterfeit problem. But, now inevitably they have to work with related parties in the supply chain, including e-Commerce platform.

In Indonesia, there is no e-Commerce that has been taking similar steps with Amazon and Alibaba. But, it is expected that in the future, the awareness to collaborate against counterfeiting will soon be realized in Indonesia, especially Indonesia being the target of the biggest e-Commerce market growth in South East Asia.

Source:

https://www.iacc.org/iacc-and-amazon-initiate-new-brand-engagement-program