Counterfeits—fake goods that infringe on the intellectual property of legitimate businesses—harm consumers, businesses, and the economy. Addressing the proliferation of counterfeits in online marketplaces will require better collaboration between stakeholders in government and industry. To foster these efforts, U.S. policymakers should amend existing laws and regulations that limit stakeholders from sharing data and establish a data sharing partnership to use advanced analytics to disrupt counterfeiting networks. If successful, these efforts could substantially reduce counterfeit imports, creating an additional 15,000 to 20,000 manufacturing jobs in America.
How Data-Sharing Partnerships Can Thwart Counterfeits on Online Marketplaces
Sujai Shivakumar
Sujai Shivakumar is a former associate director of the Center for Data Innovation, focusing on the impact of data innovation in the retail sector. He brings two decades of experience in directing studies, convening high-level dialogue, and preparing and disseminating reports of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Academy of Public Administration. He has deep experience in the assessment of public-private technology partnerships and technology transfer from the National Laboratories, analyses of policies supporting advanced manufacturing and the skilled technical workforce, policy studies relating the governance of near-earth orbit, and comparative reviews of international innovation policies and their impact on the U.S. innovation system. Dr. Shivakumar holds a doctorate in economics from George Mason University and was an Earhart Foundation scholar at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University-Bloomington. He is the author of The Constitution of Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and co-author with Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom of The Samaritan’s Dilemma, The Political Economy of Development Aid (Oxford, 2005).
