Amazon, Salvatore Ferragamo sue alleged counterfeiters

Dive Brief:

In another move against counterfeit goods on marketplaces, Amazon and Salvatore Ferragamo jointly filed two lawsuits against four individuals and three organizations for allegedly selling fake Ferragamo items through Amazon, the e-commerce giant announced on Thursday.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claims that the defendants tried to use the luxury brand's trademarks without permission to convince shoppers that the items were real, the platform said.
Per the announcement, Salvatore Ferragamo conducts its own investigations and pursues fraudsters in and out of court. The fashion brand noted that it seized 240,000 knockoff products last year.

Dive Insight:

Amazon's collaboration with Salvatore Ferragamo comes after the e-commerce platform teamed up with other brands like KF Beauty and Valentino to sue merchants for allegedly selling fraudulent items. Through its current suit, the company wants to show its efforts to hold accountable "bad actors who attempt to evade our proactive protections," Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of customer trust and partner support at Amazon, said in a statement.

For years, Amazon has been working to combat counterfeit sellers. Back in 2016, Amazon announced its development of tech tools to fight fraudulent merchants and, for the first time, sued sellers it claimed were selling counterfeit goods. The company debuted its Project Zero operation to stop fake sellers in 2019 and unveiled its Counterfeit Crimes Unit last year. To verify sellers before they are added to the platform, the e-commerce company also piloted a video conferencing vetting process.

"Through our Counterfeit Crimes Unit, we are working closely with luxury and cosmetics brands, small businesses, and brands with global name recognition," Mehta said in a statement. "We will continue to fight to protect intellectual property from small family-owned businesses through Fortune 500 companies."

Amazon and other marketplace sellers have struggled to keep counterfeiters under control for some time. The problem has caused a number of retailers, like J.C. Penney, Birkenstock and Gap, to join the Buy Safe America Coalition, which aims to protect consumers from purchasing stolen and fake goods. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee held a hearing last year to address Amazon's overall dominance in e-commerce and the prevalence of counterfeits on its marketplace.