suggests that its fight against fakes has been so successful, fewer bad actors are even trying anymore. According to its Brand Protection Report for 2023, released early Tuesday morning, the company’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit blocked more than 700,000 suspicious attempts to create seller accounts, before “they were able to list a single product.” In 2020, that figure was 6 million.
That year, the team pinpointed and rid more than 2 million counterfeit products. Last year, the figure was 7 million, driven in part by its Brand Registry Program, a critical piece of the effort, since it helps brands find and report third-party goods that infringe on their trademarks, copyrights or patents.
For Smith, the team isn’t just focused on the marketplace, but stopping counterfeiters at the source. That’s a sprawling initiative, and it can take more than manual legwork. At Amazon, it takes advanced artificial intelligence. This scenario pits the machines against crooked sellers, with a system that can automatically evaluate tens of millions of product images per week.