It’s whack-a-mole – platforms refuse to enforce, delay takedowns, and increase counterfeiting

Like many, we celebrate the growth of the ecommerce environment, and cherish the opportunities the internet has created to enable consumers to interact with our industry and to enable our industry to thrive, especially during the pandemic. But with great opportunity comes great responsibility. That is why the accountability and proactive measures required by SHOP SAFE are vital.

U.S. law currently contains many guardrails to make sure brick and mortar retailers of all sizes do not sell counterfeit items. Authentic brands don’t have to visit every store across the country to make sure these brick-and-mortar locations are only selling legitimate goods. They don’t have to go through lengthy takedown fights with these physical stores, only to find fake goods pop up again shielded by a new name.

In the online world, things are very different. Brands must monitor every platform out there, with new platforms popping up every day. And when brands find counterfeits, fake websites, dupe influencers,13 or fraudulent ads14 promoting those websites, they must beg and fight the platforms to get those products, ads, and websites removed. If the platform removes them at all, it can be weeks or months later, all that time allowing the counterfeiters to profit. Often, the infringers pop back up within days.

We can’t simply think it is okay to let brands and retailers shoulder the burden of monitoring these websites. Inefficient at best and Sisyphean at worse, this task is likened to a game of “whack-a-mole” because counterfeiters are a wily bunch. They are pioneers in the latest technology and are constantly developing creative approaches to evade detection, knowing also that the legal framework that is deployed to stop them has been rapidly outpaced by the internet itself. They also know that many third-party marketplaces can hide within that framework, avoiding responsibility for the goods they allow to be sold.