Amazon has launched the Anti-Counterfeiting Exchange (ACX), a collaborative platform that allows retailers to share information about confirmed counterfeiters in order to make it more difficult for them to move among different stores. The hope is that by sharing information about known counterfeiters, ACX participants can identify and stop perpetrators more quickly.
A number of private sector companies already are sharing information on the Exchange, although Amazon declined to share the names of those companies. However, Amazon did say that through the pilot of ACX, it already has detected hundreds of matching accounts, where the same counterfeiter tried to create selling accounts on Amazon and at least one other store operator.
“We want our customers to have confidence in their shopping experience and for brands to know they are protected from counterfeits,” said Dharmesh Mehta, VP of Selling Partner Services at Amazon in a statement. “As we laid out in our blueprint for private and public sector partnership to stop counterfeiters, we think it is critical to share information about confirmed counterfeiters to help the entire industry stop these criminals earlier..”
The data shared in the Exchange is anonymized by an independent third party before being made available. Each retailer then makes its own independent decisions about whether and how to use the information in ACX.
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Amazon is now inviting other retailers and marketplace service providers to join ACX and collaborate with the founding members to “further strengthen the industry’s collective efforts against counterfeiters.” Companies interested in joining ACX can reach out to anti-counterfeiting-exchange@amazon.com for information about admission criteria.
“This is an opening salvo in a much larger battle against counterfeiters and criminal organizations, and the effort will need even greater participation, from all industries and sectors, to reach its full potential,” said James Mancuso, Director of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, which helped create ACX, in a statement. “We look forward to supporting this momentous effort with all of the tools that the IPR Center brings to bear.”
Amazon has long been working to combat counterfeiters on its own site. In 2016, the company filed its first lawsuit against counterfeiters, and in 2020 it launched the Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) to detect and address counterfeiters on its own marketplace. In 2022, Amazon said that it had identified, seized and destroyed more than 6 million counterfeit products through the CCU and other ongoing efforts.
