Amazon has announced its long-awaited Project Zero to counter-attack counterfeits. Amazon always aims to please its customers, provide them with an excellent experience, and deliver original products from the brands. Amazon will be combining its technological prowess with the brand’s own knowledge about its intellectual property to detect counterfeit products. The platform will be using automated projections, a self-service counterfeit removal tools, and product serialization to achieve its goals.
Automated projection detects possible counterfeits against the brand logos, trademarks, and other key data about their brand provided by the brands, and it scans over 5 billion product listing updates every day. The automated projections, powered by Amazon’s machine learning expertise, scan Amazon’s stores and tries to detect counterfeits. So far, it has been immensely effective in detecting counterfeits. On the other hand, the self-service counterfeit removal tool lets the brands themselves detect counterfeits on their own and take necessary action against it. Before this came into being, brands would need to report a counterfeit to Amazon, investigating the reports and taking action. Now the brands can do it themselves faster.
Product serialization individually scans each and every one of a brand’s products purchased in Amazon’s stores. It provides a unique code for every unit that is manufactured, and the brand puts the codes provided by Amazon on their products. Every time anyone orders a product with the serial number, Amazon can verify the authenticity of the purchase.
Amazon’s product serialization service has been a game changer for us. We are excited to have this self-service counterfeit removal tool for the US Marketplace and consider this to be an insurance policy. – Ken Minn, CEO of Kenu
So far Project Zero is an invite-only experience. However, Amazon is looking forward to including more brands under this new project. Amazon has received tonnes of positive feedback for this Project Zero. For example, Mark Dely, the chief legal & administrator officer of Vera Bradley said, “Project Zero, with its automated protections and the self-service removal of counterfeit products, is a significant development that will help ensure our customers receive authentic Vera Bradley products from Amazon.
