A brand finds a counterfeit of its bestseller on a marketplace, files the report the same day, and waits. Nothing happens. It files again with more detail. Still nothing. The third filing finally gets the listing removed, six weeks later, after the counterfeiter has already moved to a new seller account. The brand assumes the marketplace does not care. In most cases, the real problem was the evidence: the first two filings gave the reviewer nothing solid to act on.
Marketplace reviewers process hundreds of reports a day and decide in minutes. They do not investigate. They match your evidence against their checklist, and if anything is ambiguous, they move on to the next report. The brands that get listings removed on the first filing are not the ones with the strongest legal claims. They are the ones whose evidence makes the reviewer's decision easy.
Counterfeit listings change constantly: prices drop, photos get swapped, seller names rotate. Your evidence has to freeze the listing as it looked when you found it. Take full-page screenshots that show the product title, the seller name, the price, and the listing URL in the address bar, all in one image. A screenshot of just the product photo proves nothing; a screenshot that ties the photo to the seller and the URL proves everything.
Save the page's HTML too, and note the exact date and time of capture. Marketplaces timestamp their own review, and a listing that was edited between your screenshot and their check creates exactly the kind of doubt that gets a report dismissed. If you use a monitoring tool, export its timestamped record as well. Redundant proof is cheap; a rejected report is expensive.
A photo of the counterfeit alone tells the reviewer what you claim. A side by side of the genuine product and the counterfeit tells them why the claim is true. Photograph the specific differences: the logo placement, the stitching, the packaging, the label typography, the hologram or lack of one. Annotate each difference directly on the image with a short label. Reviewers do not zoom in and compare; they glance, and the annotation does the comparing for them.
Buy the product if the listing is still up. A test purchase is the single strongest piece of evidence in a counterfeit report, because it converts the claim from "this listing looks wrong" to "this physical item arrived and it is not our product." Keep the order confirmation, the shipping label, and the unboxing photos. The listing screenshot shows the marketplace what was advertised; the test purchase shows them what was delivered.
The standard report portal asks for specific fields, and the order matters. Lead with the listing URL and seller identifier, then the side-by-side comparison, then the test purchase documentation, then your trademark or copyright registration number. Put the strongest visual evidence first. Reviewers skim from the top, and many never reach the attachments.
Keep a one-page evidence summary for every listing: URL, seller name, date captured, what was captured, and the three clearest differences from the genuine product. When the same counterfeiter reappears under a new seller name, and they will, the summary lets you refile in minutes instead of rebuilding the case from scratch. Repeat infringer escalations live or die on this kind of documentation.
The most common rejection reasons are all evidence problems, not legal problems. Screenshots without the URL visible. Claims about packaging differences with no photo of the genuine packaging. A trademark registration number that does not match the product category in the report. Filing against the wrong seller because the listing changed hands between capture and filing. Each of these is a five-minute fix at capture time and a six-week delay at review time.
The discipline is simple: capture everything the first time, organize it for a reviewer who spends three minutes on it, and keep the summary for the refile. Marketplaces remove listings with clean evidence fast, because clean evidence makes their decision defensible. Give them that, and the first filing is usually the last one.