Combating Counterfeiting

A recent study shows that one in six products sold online is counterfeit. Sales of counterfeit products account for up to $600 billion, or about 7%, of total world trade annually.

Aside from setting up online presences at auction or marketplace sites to ship counterfeit products directly to consumers, counterfeit sellers register domain names incorporating one or more targeted trademarks or confusingly similar variations thereof, and set up rogue websites that have the same look and feel as the brand owner's sites. They also impersonate brand owners on social media by creating rogue social media accounts and linking them to the rogue websites to establish a fa'ade of legitimacy for those websites and social media accounts. These accounts copy the brand owner's official logos and marks, product images and copyright protected contents from the genuine websites and/or social media accounts, without authorization, and list the rogue website address in the “About” or “Bio” section of the accounts. To complete the illusion, the rogue websites also hyperlink to these social media accounts in the same way as the brand owners' official websites hyperlink to the official social media accounts, which then link back to the official company or product websites, completing the circle. Since consumers often take brand owners' social media accounts at face value, and view brand owners' use of social media accounts as a way to promote their brands and to interact or communicate with their consumers, unsuspecting consumers often cannot determine the authenticity of these websites and social media accounts, and believe they are dealing with the brand owners or authorized sellers, when in fact they are not.