Protecting Your Brand: How to Remove Counterfeits from eBay

Whether you have an established eBay Shop to protect or want to ensure third-party sellers list only genuine products, it’s critical to actively monitor the marketplace and enforce against counterfeits. By following a series of steps, you can safeguard your brand reputation and prevent consumers from being misled.

In this blog post, we share a step-by-step guide on how you can remove counterfeits from eBay manually. We also explain the alternative to this resource-intensive approach: using Corsearch’s AI-assisted technology and dedicated experts to speed up enforcement and drive better results.

Step-by-step guide to removing counterfeits from eBay manually

Step 1. Identify the type of infringement

When dealing with a counterfeit or another form of brand abuse, it is crucial to specify the relevant intellectual property rights to eBay, as their actions will vary based on the type of infringement. Intellectual property rights encompass legal protections for artistic, literary, and creative works.

Trademark infringement

A trademark is a distinctive word, logo, phrase, design, or symbol used to identify the source of goods and services. Trademark infringement occurs when a mark resembling yours is used without authorization.

Counterfeiting is one form of trademark infringement, where exact copies of registered trademarks are used to deceive customers and pass off as your brand. Alternatively, lookalikes and replica products omit trademarks from their design and packaging, and copyright, design rights, and patents can be utilized to combat these illicit products.

Copyright infringement

Copyrights are granted to authors and creators of written and multimedia works, such as books, movies, music, photographs, video games, and artwork. Copyright infringement refers to the unauthorized use of a protected work.

Counterfeiters often use your copyrighted images on their product listings to give an impression of authenticity and deceive consumers.

Design right infringement

Design rights offer exclusive legal protections for the physical appearance of products, including 3D shapes, 2D patterns, or logos used for brand identification. While enforcement can be challenging depending on the product type, design rights are useful in tackling lookalikes on marketplaces.

Patent infringement

Patents safeguard inventions, products, or industrial processes, granting the right to prevent others from manufacturing, using, selling, or importing the invention for up to 20 years. Patent infringement occurs when someone uses your invention without permission.

Step 2. Gather intellectual property information and infringement evidence

Before reporting the listing, you’ll need to ensure that you have all the necessary information and evidence.

Authorization to enforce and proof of identity

If you're an agent enforcing on behalf of the intellectual property owner, you’ll need to submit a authorization document (physical or e-signed).

If you're an agent representing the business itself, you’ll be required to provide a certification of incorporation.

Evidence of infringement

You'll need to provide a screenshot or link to the infringing listing, along with its ID number, price, and seller details.

Intellectual property details

You'll be asked to provide all relevant information such as the IP owner, trademark registration number, patent number, design right registration number, and regions of IP registration.

Step 3. Enforce via VeRO

eBay’s Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program permits both owners of intellectual property (IP) rights and their authorized representatives to report eBay listings that violate those rights. eBay accepts removal requests for products or listings that infringe on your IP rights, including trademarks (such as counterfeits, lookalikes, and replicas) and copyrights.

To report a listing that infringes a trademark, you'll need to submit a Notice of Claimed Infringement (NOCI) via email [[email protected]] or fax [(801) 757-9521].

For copyright infringements, you can send a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notification to the eBay designated agent via mail, email [[email protected]], or fax [(801) 757-9521]

Further details on VeRO and eBay policies can be found here.

Alternative enforcement method: report product via listing page

If you are not enrolled within the VeRO program, you can still enforce against the listing by following the steps below. We should point out that this method should not be used as a permanent remedy to remove counterfeits, as it is not scalable and may delay response times.

To report a listing:

1. Go to the eBay listing page for the item in question.
2. Click on "Report item" or the flag icon (located below the seller's information).
3. Select the appropriate reason for the report (e.g., "Counterfeit item").
4. Provide a detailed explanation of why you believe the item is counterfeit, attaching the evidence you've collected.

Note: End consumers can also use the method above. Consider raising customer awareness that they can report a suspected counterfeit listing whenever they come across one.

Step 4. Wait for eBay’s response

Typically, eBay will respond to infringement notices in 1-3 working days. Should you not receive a response within the specified timeframe, you’ll need to resubmit the report. In the event that your initial complaint is rejected, you can choose to submit the counterfeit product report again, ensuring it contains more comprehensive and detailed information.

The consequences for sellers who infringe on intellectual property rights may include selling restrictions or suspension from the platform. When listings are deleted, sellers cannot re-upload them without making necessary changes. However, if only the description, photographs, or text violate the rules – rather than the product itself – sellers can amend the listing and re-upload it.

As the steps above indicate, this is an extended process that may draw your attention away from other important tasks. And while it is a workable for the odd counterfeit product, chances are your brand is being constantly targeted by infringers. To remove high volumes of counterfeits and protect your critical e-commerce channels such as eBay, you’ll need automated technology and a team of dedicated experts.

Save time by using AI and experts to tackle counterfeits at scale

Save time and effectively combat counterfeits using AI and expert assistance with Corsearch's comprehensive brand protection solutions. Whether you're dealing with threats on social media, marketplaces, websites, app stores, or other channels, our brand protection platform is designed to deliver impactful results while streamlining your workflow.

Gone is the need to spend hours manually reviewing listings and posts. Our platform automatically matches features, images, and logos to swiftly identify potential threats. Leveraging the power of AI, our analysts prioritize high-risk infringements and efficiently enforce actions through platform partnerships and advanced tools. Real-time dashboards provide valuable insights, enabling your team to showcase the program's value and drive overall business success.

What sets Corsearch apart from other brand protection vendors? By partnering with Corsearch, you can achieve a sustainable reduction in infringement, improved engagement with your authentic brand channels, and a significant return on investment.

Our established four-step process:

1. Detect infringement

Leverage Corsearch's cutting-edge detection capabilities to automatically gather and monitor data at scale. Our flexible keyword search framework allows you to adapt search parameters to keep up with evolving threats and infringer behavior. Additionally, our advanced image search technology aids you in finding uses of your copyright images and repeat use of counterfeit images.

2. Analyze and prioritize threats

Upon detection, we employ machine learning and image matching technology to assign risk scores, enabling you to prioritize the most critical threats to your brand. For example, you can focus on repeat infringing sellers across eBay US.

3. Enforce and remove threats

Streamline your team's efficiency and reduce costs with our automated, human-reviewed enforcement and takedown processes, leaving infringers with no time to react. Rely on Corsearch's expertise in platform policies and procedures to enforce actions efficiently and at scale.

4. Report impact

Stay on top of data, changes, and relevant trends for your brand with Corsearch's advanced analytics dashboards, facilitating faster reporting and decision-making. Elevate reporting and analytics from operational metrics to strategic insights and empower your teams to demonstrate the impact of their efforts with built-in data storytelling tools.

Speak with a brand protection expert

Harness Corsearch’s AI-powered solutions and excellent partnership with eBay to swiftly remove counterfeits and other threats found on its marketplaces across the globe.

Corsearch has access to eBay’s expedited reporting channels for faster action. We also maintain regular communication with the platform, enabling us to pass on brand owners’ concerns and enact proactive policies to prevent future infringement.

Speak with one of our experts to learn how you can achieve global visibility of threats across all channels and demonstrate tangible impact through our expert-led enforcement.

Additional resources

Learn how to protect your brand on marketplaces using Corsearch:

Stop Counterfeits on eBay
Stop Counterfeits on Amazon
Stop Counterfeits on Alibaba
Stop Counterfeits on Facebook Marketplace

Learn how to protect consumers from the dangers of:

Counterfeit Luxury Products
Counterfeit Cosmetics
Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals
Counterfeit Car Parts
Counterfeit Alcohol

Learn how to remove counterfeits from online platforms:

How to Remove Counterfeits from Online Marketplaces
How to Remove Counterfeits from Amazon
How to Remove Counterfeits from Alibaba
How to Remove Counterfeits from Facebook
How to Remove Counterfeits from X (Formerly Twitter)