INFORM doesn’t go far enough – SHOP SAFE requirements are essential to forcing platforms to crack down

Last year, Congress took the first step to tighten our anti-counterfeit defenses and protect consumers by passing the INFORM Consumers Act, which requires third party platforms to disclose more information to consumers about large volume sellers on their sites. We celebrated that measure as it helps take away the ability of criminals to sell counterfeits by unmasking them.15 But it was only a first step in what is now needed to help bring our anti-counterfeit tools into the age of ecommerce. We now need proactive measures to make sure the counterfeits don’t get on to these third-party marketplaces in the first place.

SHOP SAFE will do just that, holding third-party online platforms accountable so they will be incentivized to make the necessary changes. They will need to meet the same requirements, and face the same accountability, as brick-and-mortar retailers, your mom-and-pop store down the street, when it comes to stopping the sale of counterfeit or illicit products. If they take commonsense, easily achievable steps like asking sellers for key pieces of needed information, implementing proactive measures for screening listings before displaying the goods to the public, and denying their platform to repeat infringers they will clean up their own sites and achieve safe harbor from the legislation’s tough liability provisions. And if they don’t, they expose themselves to liabilities that will make hosting counterfeits more than just a cost of doing business.