Nowadays, it is not rare to see counterfeit products that are hard to distinguish from real ones of well-known brands and luxury companies at e-commerce stores and many consumers buy these products as they think of authentic ones. These counterfeiting problems are growing in many countries. According to the article published in 2020 by Insider
retail, Amazon and the Australian government declared that they are taking more into account coping with this problem through new initiatives. IP Australia presented a new online application called The Trust Badge being tested by NRL shops to spot fake goods from real ones being sold online. This digital app provides information about the reliability of a brand’s product as proof. This app also allows trademark owners to confirm their goods. And it is being blamed that popular e-commerce stores such as Amazon, and Alibaba are the causes of these counterfeit products being smuggled. After research, data was provided on the types of products with percentages that are most counterfeited. For example, Most counterfeited goods are leather products with 13% followed by electrical goods(12%). Watches also made up 7 percent. Furthermore, starting the Project Zero program against fake goods allows local sellers to be part of the program and create serial numbers for their products which helps amazon’s online store to authenticate these brands’ goods. It is said that more than 10000 brands have joined this program and are expanding.
Some articles talk about how express and its other online stores are struggling with counterfeit products and why they seem to be promoting counterfeiters by looking at their websites. It is known that in the past Alibaba had many attempts to eliminate fake goods of luxury brands in the stores and panelized counterfeit sellers but the penalty was not tough. Even lawsuits between owners of Gucci and Saint Laurent and Alibaba and Alipay were filed and they ended with dismissal. Furthermore, Alibaba lost enrollment of its US-based International Anti-Counterfeiting. On the one hand, they look like they are combating removing fake products from the store, but on the other hand, it was discovered buying Daily their website page and algorithm look like they are promoting them. This is because features of luxury products are displayed with the title “ Large Brands Drop” on Alipay’s landing page. And there are also authentic goods on the same page that create confusion among consumers. Moreover, it was discovered that most buyers know purchased products are not authentic and even give some comments on the fake product. It makes the situation tougher for Alibaba because demand is high. These days, Alibaba has considering more developing protection of IP rights by declaring that infringing links are being blocked and any complaints are solved within 24 hours
I think the rising in the availability of purchasing online popular and luxury brands products are causing infringement of intellectual property rights(IP) and this, in turn, gives many counterfeiters access to any country’s market. Even we can witness that most-used online marketplaces such as Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay have also counterfeit-related problems and are struggling to remove fake goods from their stores. Australia IP’s The Trust Badge app which allows brand owners to authenticate their goods and implement various anti-counterfeiting programs is one of the effective ways to prevent people to be victims of counterfeiters. If we look at the problem from another side, some part of buyers purchase brand fake goods knowingly and their comments on the products review page express as if they were happy. Moreover, the Chinese famous online store Alibaba pretends to combat sales of fake products but in reality, their store seems to promote them. To me, I recommend that people stop buying luxury and expensive brand products online and not purchase counterfeiting products knowingly. By doing this, we can eliminate the violation of intellectual property rights.
