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Helping Brands Protect their Intellectual Property

Amazon protects brands and customers by constantly developing, investing in and improving our intellectual property (IP) protections.

We continue to advance our IP protection efforts with investments in industry-leading technology and expert people. Our annual report shows Amazon’s continued progress in raising the bar within strategic areas critical to brand protection.
Enabling Selling Partners While Stopping Bad Actors
Amazon’s automated technology scans billions of attempted changes to product detail pages daily for signs of potential abuse

Amazon uses advanced technology and expert human reviewers to verify the identities of potential sellers. When prospective sellers apply to sell in Amazon’s store, they are required to provide a form of government-issued photo IDs, along with other information about their business. We employ advanced identity detection methods like document forgery detection, image and video verification, and other technologies to quickly confirm the authenticity of government-issued IDs and whether they match the individual applying to sell in our store. In addition to verifying these, Amazon’s systems analyse numerous data points, including behaviour signals and connections to previously detected bad actors, to detect and prevent risks.

Similarly, throughout the selling experience in our store, Amazon’s systems monitor selling accounts to identify anomalies or changes in account information, behaviours, and other risk signals. In the event Amazon identifies a risk of fraud or abuse, we promptly initiate an investigation using automated and/or human review, request additional information where helpful, and swiftly remove bad actors from our store.

Powerful Tools to Protect Brands

Amazon has developed a suite of tools and programmes to protect customers, brands and selling partners from counterfeits, fraud and abuse, and create a consistent and trusted experience for customers every time they shop on Amazon.

Brand Registry helps brands better protect their brand and intellectual property rights. Using the Report a Violation tool, brand owners can find and report infringements. Brand Registry also allows Amazon to more effectively safeguard brands via automated protections that use machine learning and the data provided in Brand Registry.
IP Accelerator helps small businesses efficiently obtain intellectual property rights and expedites a brand’s access to Brand Registry by offering high-quality trademark registration services at competitive rates.
Transparency protects brands and customers by ensuring that every unit shipped is authentic. It is a product serialisation service that prevents counterfeits from reaching customers by using codes to uniquely identify individual units of enrolled products. These codes can be scanned throughout the supply chain to verify authenticity, regardless of where the products were purchased.
Project Zero combines Amazon’s advanced technology, machine learning and innovation with the sophisticated knowledge that brands have of their own intellectual property and how best to detect counterfeits of their products.

Collaborating with Trademark Organisations

Amazon works with trademark organisations across the world, including United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), to protect the intellectual property rights of rights owners. Amazon directly receives and acts upon information from the USPTO. We leverage this information to remove false and otherwise abusive brands and share trends within our store with the USPTO to support their investigations. Amazon joined the EUIPO’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Portal, which provides secure communication and exchange of details with a wide variety of IP stakeholders to support IP protection efforts. Amazon is committed to further collaboration within the private and public IP ecosystem.

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