The American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) has welcomed the reintroduction of a bill that provides “a baseline for all online marketplace platforms when it comes to fighting counterfeits and ensuring consumer safety.”
The bipartisan Stopping Harmful Offers on Platforms by Screening Against Fakes in E-Commerce (SHOP SAFE) Act establishes trademark liability for online marketplace platforms when a third party sells a counterfeit that poses a risk to consumer health or safety (and when that platform does not follow certain best practices).
It also aims to incentivise online platforms to establish best practices such as seller vetting to ensure their legitimacy, removing counterfeit listings, and removing sellers who repeatedly sell fake goods.
It was introduced yesterday (20 May) by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet chairman Henry Johnson, Jr, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet Ranking member Darrell Issa, and representative Ben Cline.
“As American consumers increasingly turn to the internet to shop, counterfeiters have kept pace. To stop this rising trend in online sales of unsafe counterfeit products, the law must keep pace too,” said Nadler. “I am proud to reintroduce the bipartisan SHOP SAFE Act, which will protect consumers by making platforms appropriately responsible for harmful counterfeits sold through their websites by others and encouraging them to go on the offensive in the fight against fakes.”
AAFA president and CEO Steve Lamar said the Act was “a step in the right direction to make sure all platforms address the issue of counterfeits on their sites. Creating a liability requirement would go a long way to ensure that platforms meet their responsibility to their customers.
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By GlobalData“More must be done to ensure that the products Americans purchase by way of online third-party marketplaces are legitimate, meet safety standards, and do not steal intellectual property that supports American jobs. The SHOP SAFE Act brings this conversation to the forefront of peoples’ minds.”
