This week, Amazon published a “Policy Position Paper” setting out its commitment to address the marketing and sales of counterfeit products across its platforms. Amazon’s aims are to “drive counterfeits to zero” and ACG welcomes this compelling commitment.
Amazon is championing a framework that targets the growing threats that counterfeiting brings to UK consumers, business and the economy. The aim is to introduce better exchanges of information to block counterfeiting at earlier stages and stop fake products at our borders. Amazon will also help to raise greater public awareness and increase resources for law enforcement, which will facilitate the identification and prosecution of counterfeiters.
Counterfeiting poses serious and increasing risks to UK business and consumers. The market for fake products in the UK is worth over £16 billion which results in lost revenues of over £4 billion which could be used to build our economy and public services, instead it is falling into the hands of international criminals who are using the money to seed fund other forms of illicit trade in people drugs and weapons. What’s more is that the last customs report, published before the UK left the EU identified that over 37% of fake goods detained at the borders were dangerous to consumers.
Phil Lew, Director General of the ACG greatly welcomes this developed Amazon strategy. ACG is already working with Amazon to stop the flood of counterfeit goods from entering UK and international markets. Working together, over the past year, ACG and Amazon have developed even closer working relationships, which have built greater knowledge and awareness about how counterfeiters work and how they can be prevented from abusing systems to market their increasingly dangerous goods.
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