A New Era in Fighting Counterfeits on Marketplaces: Reporting Mechanisms and Seller Transparency

Updated: 3 September 2026 · Category: KVKK and Digital Compliance

A New Era in Fighting Counterfeits on Marketplaces: Reporting Mechanisms and Seller Transparency

The DSA strengthens notice-and-action, trader traceability and risk mitigation mechanisms against illegal content and products on online platforms. For brand owners, the quality of takedown requests and monitoring repeat sellers are becoming critical.

Contents

Short answer
Why does it matter?
What should companies do?
How should it be measured?
Sources
Frequently asked questions

Short Answer

Fighting counterfeit or unlawful products on EU marketplaces now requires more than sending the platform a general abuse email. The Digital Services Act provides for a notice-and-action mechanism for illegal content, trader traceability on marketplaces that allow contracts with consumers, and measures against service recipients who frequently provide manifestly illegal content. Brand teams should use these mechanisms alongside evidence quality, seller identity and repeat infringement behaviour.

Why Does It Matter?

The notice-and-action mechanism under DSA Article 16 aims to enable sufficiently precise and substantiated notices about specific illegal content. For brand protection, this requires a more structured evidence package than the bare assertion “this product is counterfeit”.

Article 30 on trader traceability imposes obligations concerning seller identity traceability on marketplaces where consumers conclude distance contracts. Seller names, addresses, contact details, trade register information and other identity signals help brand teams connect clusters of infringements.

The Commission’s €550 million decision concerning AliExpress in 2026 showed that DSA enforcement addresses the risks of illegal, unsafe and counterfeit products directly at the level of platform systems. This makes it more important for brand owners to go beyond individual listing removals and measure systemic seller behaviour.

B10_DSA_NOTICE_SELLER_MODEL tracks every notice across listing, seller, evidence, platform response and recurrence layers.

What should companies do? DSA-Compliant Brand Reporting Operations

Generate a unique evidence ID for every listing. Keep the URL, seller, date, product image and claim together.
Classify the grounds for illegality. Keep counterfeiting, trademark infringement, unsafe products and other legal grounds distinct.
Resolve seller identities across accounts. Match the same seller’s different store names and accounts across countries.
Use the notice-and-action channel. If the platform has a DSA/illegal-content mechanism, distinguish it from the general support channel.
Keep a record of outcomes. Standardise outcomes such as removed, rejected, demoted and more evidence requested.
Create a repeat seller metric. Measure whether the same seller or seller cluster resumes selling after a listing is removed.
Assess a trusted flagger strategy. Coordinate operations with relevant industry associations or authorised actors.
Prepare a platform escalation file. Produce evidence of systemic recurrence beyond individual URLs.

An unauthorised or suspicious sale does not automatically involve a counterfeit product. A notice may concern parallel sales of genuine goods, breach of contract, trademark infringement or product safety; these grounds do not share the same legal basis.

Removal performance should therefore be measured beyond the number of URLs removed. False-positive rates and reasons for rejected notices should also be monitored to improve evidence quality.

Brand teams can use a standard evidence schema to improve notice quality. The listing URL, seller ID, infringed trademark, registration reference, product image, comparison material, test purchase result and legal grounds can be kept in one case record. This avoids rebuilding the file from scratch when the platform requests more information. Over time, teams can also measure which evidence combinations yield higher acceptance rates.

Seller-level analysis is especially important in high-volume counterfeiting. When a seller’s store closes, the same person may return under a different name, logo or account. Phone numbers, addresses, product images, pricing patterns, SKU portfolios and store descriptions can help resolve seller identities. The aim is to prioritise review, rather than make automatic legal judgments. Once a seller cluster is verified, escalation to the platform can demonstrate recurring systematic behaviour instead of presenting only a list of individual URLs.

Proposed Measurement Model for B10

Control	KPI	Risk Signal
Notice	Notice acceptance rate	Insufficient evidence
Speed	Median platform action time	Slow processing
Seller	Repeat seller rate	Repeated infringement
Evidence	Evidence completeness	Incomplete notice
Recurrence	Relisting rate	Return of a removed product
Accuracy	False-positive/rejection rate	Misclassification

The DSA does not set a fixed universal takedown deadline; the time KPI is an operational indicator B10 uses to compare platform performance.

Expert Assessment

For brand teams, one of the DSA’s most important effects is more structured platform reporting processes. However, notice-and-action does not mean every brand owner request will be accepted automatically; notices must be sufficiently precise and substantiated.

Without seller-level recurrence analysis, removing a URL may look like success while the same operation continues under another listing a few hours later. A seller graph is therefore a more valuable brand protection metric than listing count.

Digital Risk and Compliance Analysis

Using B10_DSA_NOTICE_SELLER_MODEL, B10 can track listing evidence, seller identity resolution, DSA notice outcomes, relisting and platform escalation performance in one dashboard.