Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) Frequently Asked Questions

Products offered for sale on Amazon must be authentic. The sale of counterfeit products is strictly prohibited. Failure to abide by this policy may result in loss of selling privileges, funds being withheld, and disposal of inventory in our possession. The sale and/or trafficking of counterfeit products may also result in referral to law enforcement/criminal prosecution as well as civil action. It is each seller’s and supplier’s responsibility to source, sell, and fulfil only authentic products. Prohibited products include bootlegs, fakes, or pirated copies of products or content; products that have been illegally replicated, reproduced, or manufactured; and products that infringe another party’s intellectual property rights. You can read more here.

If you are enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, please log in and use the Report a Violation tool to search for and report items that may be infringing on your copyrights or registered trademarks. If you are not enrolled but are the Rights Owner of an active registered trademark, review the Brand Registry eligibility requirements and enrol here. If you are not enrolled and not eligible for Brand Registry, Amazon provides a publicly available form for reporting alleged intellectual property infringements such as copyright, trademark, and patent concerns.

CCU’s mission is to pursue counterfeiters worldwide and has a global presence. We work with brands and law enforcement around the world in order to pursue these bad actors. CCU understands that counterfeiters work globally to sell their illicit products and we meet them where they are by partnering with law enforcement and brands to pursue them worldwide through our external enforcement efforts.

Yes. CCU partners as co-plaintiffs with brands in civil litigation and in jointly referring cases to law enforcement. In some instances, CCU will work unilaterally and will file civil suits and refer bad actors to law enforcement based on the violations of Amazon’s Anti-Counterfeiting Policy and the impact that infringing goods has on Amazon’s customer trust and health and safety of consumers.

Yes. CCU partners with brands regardless of their business size.

While Amazon does not charge brands for collaborating with them and law enforcement to take down counterfeiters, brands may incur additional costs depending on the efforts taken, such as costs associated with test buys, legal fees, or other litigation costs.

Yes, in order to partner with the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit, you must be enrolled in Brand Registry with a registered trademark. If you are the Rights Owner of an active registered trademark in the form of a text-based mark (word mark) or an image-based mark with words, letters, or numbers (design mark) that is on your product and packaging issued by an accepted government trademark office and want to work with us, please enrol in Brand Registry.