by David Barnett and Claire Breheny
BLOG POST
Following the recent launch by the IPO (in conjunction with the ACG) of the #choosesafenotfake campaign, highlighting the dangers of fake beauty, skincare and perfume products, we took a look at the landscape of counterfeit beauty products in a new study, with a specific focus on standalone e-commerce websites.
For perfumes and cosmetics, we found that websites offering the sale of potentially counterfeit products targeting top brands are easily identifiable through quick and simple searches. Many of these websites incorporate 'red-flag' indicators of non-legitimacy, including low price point and the use of high-risk domain-name extensions. Some also include features such as 'Trusted Site' icons which appear to have been used without authorisation.
The findings illustrate the likely scale of the counterfeit problem, and highlight the importance of brand protection programmes to identify and take down infringing sites.
This article was first published on 17 April 2024 at:
https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/youre-so-fake-the-ugly-side-of-beauty-product-sales
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WHITE PAPER
Introduction
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) Counter-Infringement division, in conjunction with the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG), has recently launched the #choosesafenotfake campaign, highlighting the dangers of fake beauty, skincare and perfume products[1,2]. In many cases, these products may contain harmful ingredients, and the campaign presents a series of guidelines to consumers for avoiding counterfeits, including careful vetting of sellers and websites (including checking of contact details, reviews, and site quality), avoiding platforms requesting payment by bank transfer, and being wary of sources which may otherwise seem attractive purely by virtue of a low product price point.
The issue of counterfeits - which are explicitly passing off as having been manufactured by the brand owner in question - is distinct from that of 'dupe' or replica products, more usually taken to mean own-brand items which just appear similar to the branded originals (and are also often offered at a significantly lower price). Dupes are problematic for brand owners in different ways, and can involve loss of revenue arising from cases in which unfair advantage is gained through trademark infringement - however, this issue is not specifically discussed in this study.
In this study looking at the counterfeit landscape for beauty products, we consider ('standalone') e-commerce websites offering the sale of perfumes or cosmetics. The analysis of registered domain names offers a readily available source of comprehensive data, and a focus on perfumes and cosmetics is likely to highlight areas where counterfeiting may be more commonplace, and potentially attractive to consumers, due in many cases to the high prices of the originals.
i. Perfume-related domain names
Using domain-name zone file data[3], it is possible to determine that there are over 146,000 registered gTLD domains with names containing 'perfum', 'parfum', 'fragrance', 'scents', 'essence' or 'aroma'. Of these, we focus on the subset which also contain the name of a well-known and/or highly-counterfeited perfume brand, and which are most likely to have been registered specifically to infringe against that brand (and provide the greatest potential for customer deception). The brands considered are the top ten highest-earning perfume brands in 2023[4,5], in addition to three further brands[6] known to be at risk of counterfeiting. This yields a dataset of 251 high-relevance domains, of which 128 were found to be
registered by third parties (with the remainder deemed to be official registrations, based on registrant contact details and/or use of an official corporate registrar).
The breakdown of site content type (based on a manual inspection) of these 128 high-relevance, third-party domain names is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Content types observed on the set of 128 third-party (i.e. non-official) domains with names containing perfume-related keywords and top perfume brand names
A categorisation of 'potential counterfeit' is an opinion made on the basis of a number of indicators of non-legitimacy, which are outlined below, together with other observations of additional concern pertaining to the sites assigned to this category:
- Many of the sites are low quality and/or lack the consumer rights information typically given on legitimate sites, and many are selling products at prices significantly below the recommended retail price (RRP) for the (genuine) goods in question. Indeed, in many cases, the significant price reductions below RRP are referenced on the sites as an explicit selling point (Figure 2).
- 9 of the 13 sites utilise 'https' links (implying the use of an SSL certificate, often denoted by a 'secure' padlock alongside the address bar - historically frequently cited as an indicator of a legitimate site, but now commonly arising through the use of free or low-cost certificates obtained through budget providers who often do not check the authenticity of the sites in question).
- Several of the domains utilise new-gTLD extensions, with examples including .store, .shop, .click, and .tokyo, many of which have previously been noted as being popular with infringers.
- Some incorporate pull-down menus for buyers to select their local currency, a feature which is uncommon on official sites (which tend to utilise specific distinct domains for individual customer markets).
- In some cases, site features such as a 'Trusted Site' icon is included (which can easily just be copied from another site and displayed with no authorisation).
Figure 2: Examples of products being offered at significant price reductions below RRP
Of particular concern is the fact that 13 live sites offering potential counterfeits (10% of the potential high-relevance dataset) were identified through this simple search. Some examples of these sites are shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Screenshots of examples of sites offering the sale of potentially counterfeit perfume items (second-level domain (SLD) names (i.e. the part of the domain name to the left of the dot): creedperfumeus; diorperfume; perfume-chanel; baccaratperfume)
Amongst the other sites in the dataset:
- 'Other potential brand infringements' include instances of third-party sites using the same (or similar) brand names in related industry areas, or cases where the domain resolves or re-directs to a third-party site; 'unrelated third-party content' comprises cases where the name appears to be being used legitimately and/or there is a less close overlap in industry or product area.
- 'Generic product-related content' includes results such as blog sites giving information on the products in question.
- Some of the non-active sites have been monetised through the inclusion of pay-per-click links or the hosting of content offering the domain name for sale, indicating an intention to benefit from the abuse of the brand name.
- Instances of third-party sites which re-direct to the official brand site may be of little or no threat, but can be associated with e-mail scams (e.g. where the domain name is used as a 'from' address, and the re-direction is intended to provide the impression of legitimacy), or affiliate revenue generation schemes.
ii. Cosmetics-related domain names
In the second part of the study, we similarly focus on domains with names containing either 'make(-)up' or 'cosmetics' (of which there are over 110,000 in total) together with the names of any of the top ten cosmetics brands according to Brand Finance[7], or any of a set of other 'high-risk' brands[8] selected by virtue of their large followings on social media (implying potential popularity with younger consumers who may be more inclined to risk the purchase of a cheaper product), and/or which may be attractive to counterfeiters because of their high price point.
For this set of brands, 154 brand-specific domains were identified (of which the selected group of 'high-risk' brands actually make up the majority - 104 domains, compared with 50 relating to the top ten brands from the Brand Finance list). In total, 40 of the domains appear to be under official ownership, leaving 114 third-party domains. The breakdown of site content type of these domains is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Content types observed on the set of 114 third-party domains with names containing cosmetics-related keywords and top cosmetics brand names
Many of the top-level trends are similar to those seen in the perfumes dataset; the three examples of potential counterfeit sites are shown in Figure 5 (note that one of the sites explicitly gives a webmail contact e-mail address, also an indicator of likely non-legitimacy).
Figure 5: Screenshots of examples of sites offering the sale of potentially counterfeit cosmetics items (SLD names: lorealcosmeticspk; kyliecosmetics-bestseller; lancome-cosmetics)
Conclusion
The range of concerning sites identified through these relatively simple searches, together with the large numbers of domains generally containing relevant keywords, gives some indication of the likely scale of the counterfeit problem - which will comprise a significantly larger landscape if other online channels are also considered. These observations highlight the importance of brand owners taking a proactive approach to monitoring and enforcement as part of a wider brand-protection initiative, to protect both their reputations and the safety of their customer base.
References
[2] https://www.a-cg.org/consumer-advice/safe-not-fake
[3] Analysis carried out on 07-Mar-2024
[4] https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/top-10-perfume-brands-in-the-world-1135358/?singlepage=1; the brands (expressed as the strings used in the domain searches) are: 'dior', 'loreal' ,'estee(-)lauder', 'rolex', 'hermes', 'gucci', 'chanel', 'vuitton', 'shiseido', and 'givaudan'
[5] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-50-perfume-brands-world-035618724.html
[6] 'baccarat', 'tom(-)ford', and 'creed'
[7] https://brandirectory.com/rankings/cosmetics/table; the brands are: 'loreal', 'estee(-)lauder', 'nivea', 'gillette', 'dove', 'guerlain', 'lancome', 'clinique', 'pantene', and 'garnier'
[8] 'kylie', 'huda', 'fenty', 'charlotte(-)tilbury', and 'drunk(-)elephant'
This article was first published as an e-book on 17 April 2024 at:
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