Amazon is taking its “Project Zero” anti-counterfeit program to seven additional countries, expanding a program designed to help brands fight fake products, amid heightened scrutiny of knock-offs on its e-commerce platform.
Project Zero will now be available to sellers on the Amazon online stores in Australia, Brazil, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, bringing the total to 17 countries, the company announced Monday night. Launched last year, the program is already available in the U.S., UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan, India, Mexico, and Canada.
Amazon says more than 10,000 brands, ranging from small companies to large global retailers, have enrolled in the program, which gets its name from Amazon’s stated goal of zero counterfeit products on its platform. The company cited the examples of Arduino, BMW, ChessCentral, LifeProof, OtterBox, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Veet as participants.
Counterfeits were one of the topics that legislators grilled Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos about in a recent Congressional antitrust hearing with other major tech CEOs.
“Amazon has said it’s fixing its counterfeit problem, but counterfeiting seems to be getting worse, not better,” said U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, asking Bezos why Amazon doesn’t do more to fight counterfeits.
He added, “Amazon acts like it’s not responsible for counterfeits being sold by third-party sellers on its platform, and we’ve heard that Amazon puts the burden and cost on brand owners to police Amazon’s site, even though Amazon makes money when a counterfeit good is sold on its site.”
In response, Bezos outlined the company’s fight against counterfeits and disputed the notion that counterfeits are ultimately a benefit to Amazon.
“I think this is an incredibly important issue and one that we work very hard on. Counterfeits are a scourge,” he said. “It does not help us earn trust with customers. It’s bad for customers. It’s bad for honest third-party sellers. We do a lot to prevent counterfeiting. We have a team of more than a thousand people that does this. We invest hundreds of millions of dollars in systems that do this.”
As an example, Bezos pointed to Project Zero, saying it “helps brands serialize individual products, which really helps with counterfeiting.”
That was a reference to one of Project Zero’s three main components, in which brands apply a unique code in the packaging or product to allow Amazon to confirm the authenticity of individual products. Project Zero also includes self-service tools for brands to remove listings from Amazon.com, and technology that automatically identifies suspicious listings.
“Amazon is committed to protecting our customers and the brands we collaborate with worldwide,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon vice president of Worldwide Customer Trust and Partner Support, in the news release announcing the expansion Monday night. “Project Zero has been a leap forward in protecting brands, especially for those that use all three of its components.”
In the hearing, Rep. Johnson cited prior testimony from David Barnett, the CEO of PopSockets brand phone holders, who had said in an earlier hearing that Amazon listed counterfeit versions of the product ahead of genuine ones, and only stopped the practice after PopSockets committed to spend $2 million on advertising.
“That’s unacceptable,” Bezos said, promising to look into the specifics of the PopSockets claims, which received widespread coverage earlier this year. “If those are the facts, and if someone somewhere inside Amazon said, ‘Buy X dollars in ads, and then we’ll help you with your counterfeit problem,’ that is unacceptable.”
Even if Amazon makes money in the short term on counterfeit goods, it’s ultimately not in its best interest to allow fake goods, Bezos said. “I would much rather lose a sale than lose a customer,” he said.
As noted by Bezos in the hearing, the company announced the formation of an internal “Counterfeit Crimes Unit” earlier this year as part of its initiatives.
Amazon has also filed a series of lawsuits over counterfeit goods in recent years, most recently joining Italian luxury fashion brand Valentino to pursue an alleged counterfeiter of the company’s Rockstud shoes. Amazon has filed similar suits in the past in partnership with companies including Nite Ize, a maker of mobile accessories and LED products; Vera Bradley, designer of purses and accessories; and high-end phone case company OtterBox.
The company has sought to avoid legal liability for counterfeit goods sold on its platform. In what became a landmark case, Amazon was sued in 2013 by Seattle-based novelty pillowcase maker Milo & Gabby over knock-offs sold by other companies on Amazon.com. Courts sided with Amazon’s argument that the sellers of the counterfeits were the ones who should be held liable.
