Platforms don’t collect enough seller information to share because of the current standard of knowledge
John H. Zacharia and Kari Kammel, 2020 - John H. Zacharia is former Assistant Deputy Chief for Litigation for the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the United States Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. Kari Kammel is the Assistant Director of Education and Outreach at the Center for AntiCounterfeiting and Product Protection at Michigan State University. “HOW CONGRESS PROPOSES TO PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM ONLINE COUNTERFEITS: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” September,
//DH
By the same token, third-party sellers’ use of e-commerce platforms in this way comes with obvious risks to consumers. Unlike when it sells its own branded products, e-commerce platforms cede control to third-party sellers to decide which products to sell, the means of shipping those products, and even pricing. Thus, although e-commerce platforms will typically prohibit third-party sellers from trafficking in illegal products, a counterfeiter can easily circumvent this prohibition by making the counterfeit product appear genuine. Furthermore, e-commerce platforms may not collect sufficient information to identify third-party sellers – making it harder (and in some cases impossible) for customers or brand owners to pursue third-party counterfeiters or those selling counterfeits online. And when ecommerce platforms neither store nor ship the third-party sellers’ products, they are effectively choosing to be blindfolded from seeing whether the products sold by third parties are genuine, or even seeing third-party sellers’ real identities.