The world's largest e-commerce platform is significantly increasing its efforts to root out counterfeit goods from its website.
Bloomberg reports that Amazon made knockoff products a top priority for 2017 and, according to a source familiar with the matter, is developing teams in the U.S. and Europe to combat them.
Although Amazon long knew about the growing problem of counterfeit products, it generally relied on sellers to identify and report them.
The new teams, however, will attempt to register brands with Amazon and, in turn, require sellers of those goods to prove that they have permission to do so.
The initiative builds on an initial registry created earlier this year for a small number of brands. Amazon began charging merchants that sold those brand-name items, which prompted complaints from legitimate sellers.
Company officials, however, said that the registry showed how seriously it took counterfeiting.
Amazon also recently filed lawsuits on behalf of select merchants who were particularly affected by the sale of cheap knockoffs on the website.
“Amazon has zero tolerance for the sale of counterfeit items on our site," the company told Bloomberg, adding that it is "aggressively pursuing bad actors."
The expanded registry effort reportedly follows Amazon's talks with the National Football League and Major League Baseball about selling licensed merchandise on Amazon. The leagues walked away due to concerns about fake goods on Amazon's marketplace.
