Building a search-based architecture to enhance product certificate verification and reducing counterfeit

Abstract

The overall growth in the share of online sales has grown in comparison to total sales intensively. Online shopping is comfortable for consumers, but it also raises specific challenges in terms of product safety. For this, the European Commission published a notice on market surveillance of products sold online on August 1, 2017, to support authorities' work (European Commission, 2017). In addition, the Product Safety Pledge (European Commission, 2020) is a voluntary responsibility beyond product safety legal obligations. It helps to remove dangerous non-food consumer products for sale online rapidly. Furthermore, it sets out activities by online marketplaces to enhance product safety, such as offering a simplified way for customers to report potentially hazardous products. OECD wrote in their report 2016 that up to 5% of imports are counterfeited goods. The report estimated this damage at EUR 85 billion (OECD/EUIPO, 2019). This paper proposes a search-based architecture that closes the unilateral published digital product certificate information gaps, European RAPEX System, and online marketplaces. The new search-based architecture used information access technology to empower consumers and authorities by easily verifying a product within its labelled certificate. This could be one of the important steps in the direction to reduce counterfeiting. This paper aims to create a new category of applications in which the end-user identifies the counterfeit product and contributes to the fight against product piracy.