How to Prevent Counterfeits on Your Listing (Protecting Your Brand)

Your sales suddenly drop overnight. You check your Amazon listing and find your Buy Box is gone, replaced by a new, unknown seller with a suspiciously low price and a flood of new negative reviews complaining about product quality. You've been hijacked.

This is the number one nightmare for successful Amazon sellers. Counterfeiters and hijackers can destroy a brand's reputation, erode customer trust, and steal your hard-earned revenue. Fighting back can feel overwhelming, but Amazon provides a powerful set of tools for those who prepare. This guide will provide a multi-layered strategy to proactively defend your brand and effectively remove threats.

1. The Foundation: Trademark and Brand Registry

Before you can even begin to fight, you need the right legal standing.

• The Non-Negotiable Prerequisite: You must have a registered trademark for your brand name or logo in the country where you are selling.
• Enroll in Brand Registry: Once your trademark is registered, you must enroll it in Amazon Brand Registry.

Without Brand Registry, you are effectively powerless. Your infringement reports will be treated as one seller's word against another's. With Brand Registry, you are recognized by Amazon as the legitimate brand owner, giving you the authority and the tools to officially defend your intellectual property (IP).

2. Your Proactive Defense: Building a Moat

The best way to fight counterfeiters is to make your brand an unattractive and difficult target from the start.

• Enroll in Amazon Transparency: This is the single most effective weapon against hijackers on your ASIN.
  
  • How it works: In the Transparency program, you apply a unique, serialized QR-style code to every single unit you manufacture. Amazon scans this code at the fulfillment center before shipping any order. If a hijacker sends in a batch of counterfeit products without these valid, unique codes, they are stopped dead in their tracks and the inventory is flagged. It makes it virtually impossible for counterfeit units of your product to reach a customer through FBA.
• Make Your Product Defensible:
  
  • Permanent Branding: Ensure your brand name and logo are permanently affixed to both your product and its packaging (e.g., engraved, embossed, professionally printed). A simple sticker on a generic box is weak evidence. Permanent branding provides clear, undeniable proof in infringement reports.
  • Create a Unique Bundle: A powerful strategy is to bundle your primary product with a small, unique, branded accessory (e.g., a custom-branded microfiber cloth for your sunglasses, or a unique recipe e-book for a kitchen gadget). This makes your product offering unique. A hijacker would have to counterfeit not just one, but two items perfectly to match your listing, significantly increasing their effort and risk.

3. Your Reactive Defense: Removing an Active Threat

If a hijacker appears on your listing despite your best defenses, you need to act quickly and professionally.

1. Conduct a "Test Buy": This is the crucial step. You (or a third-party service) must purchase the product from the suspected hijacker. This is the only way to get irrefutable proof.
2. Document Everything: Once the test buy arrives, take detailed photos and videos that clearly demonstrate it is a counterfeit. Show differences in:
   
   • Packaging and branding (logo is wrong, packaging is cheap).
   • Product quality, materials, or colour.
   • The lack of your unique bundled accessory.
   • The absence of your Transparency code.
3. Report Through Brand Registry: Go to the "Report a Violation" tool in your Brand Registry dashboard. File a trademark infringement report. State clearly and concisely that the seller is offering a counterfeit product that does not match your brand's quality or specifications. Upload all your photographic and video evidence from the test buy. Be professional and persistent.

4. Advanced Protection Tools

For established brands, Amazon offers even more powerful programs:

• Project Zero: An invitation-only program that gives trusted brands the power of self-service counterfeit removal, allowing you to directly remove infringing listings without waiting for Amazon to investigate.
• Brand Gating: In cases of severe, persistent counterfeiting, Amazon may "gate" a brand, meaning no other seller can list products under that brand without first providing invoices and getting direct approval.

While Brand Registry provides the tools, a comprehensive IP strategy is a specialized field. Sitruna can connect you with trusted e-commerce IP lawyers to secure your trademarks in multiple countries and protect your brand on a global scale.

Useful Resources

• Amazon Brand Registry Homepage
• Amazon Transparency Program
• Amazon Project Zero
• UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO)

Conclusion: Protection is an Ongoing Process

Protecting your brand on Amazon is not a one-time task; it's an ongoing process of vigilance. By building proactive defenses with programs like Transparency and responding effectively with documented test buys, you can create a secure environment where your brand can not only survive but thrive.

Need help developing a global brand protection strategy? Schedule a free discovery call with the Sitruna team at www.sitruna.com/meet to discuss how to safeguard your intellectual property.

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