MAP (Minimum Advertised Price)
MAP is a manufacturer-set price floor that authorized retailers contractually agree not to advertise below. It is enforced through distribution agreements, not through pricing law: a unilateral MAP policy is permissible under US antitrust law (and similar in many jurisdictions) when applied independently. MAP affects advertised price, not sold price — retailers may sell at any price they choose, but cannot publish prices below MAP without violating the agreement. Most distribution agreements specify a notice-and-cure process for MAP violations before termination.
Also known as: Minimum Advertised Price; MAP policy
MAP violation
A MAP violation is a public listing of an authorized retailer offering one of the brand's products at an advertised price below the MAP floor. Detection is straightforward — compare listing price against the brand's MAP for that SKU. Enforcement is the harder part: it depends on a written, dated MAP policy that the retailer acknowledged before they began selling, plus documented evidence of the violating listing (timestamped screenshot, URL, seller name). Without the policy and the acknowledgment, enforcement is significantly weaker.
Grey market
A grey market good is a genuine, manufacturer-produced product sold through an unauthorized distribution channel. The product itself is real — not counterfeit. What's wrong is who's selling it and where they got it. Grey market typically reaches marketplaces through cross-border distributor diversion (an EU distributor selling into the US contrary to territorial restrictions), employee-discount arbitrage, dead-stock liquidation through liquidators, bankruptcy or insolvency sales, and returns or sample arbitrage. Enforcement combines manufacturer's-right complaints (under the "material differences" doctrine in many jurisdictions) and distribution-agreement enforcement once the diversion source is identified via batch-code tracing.
Also known as: gray market; parallel imports
Counterfeit
A counterfeit is a fake product made by an unauthorized manufacturer, intended to pass as the genuine article. The product itself is unauthorized at the manufacturing level — molds, packaging, branding, and frequently materials are produced without the brand owner's permission. Counterfeits are distinct from grey market because they're not real product diverted from a real channel; they're fakes in their own right. The legal framework is generally the strongest of the brand-protection categories: counterfeit goods can be seized at customs in many jurisdictions, manufacturers and sellers face criminal liability, and platform enforcement workflows respond fastest to counterfeit complaints.
Unauthorized seller
An unauthorized seller is a third party who acquired a brand's product through legitimate channels (retail purchase, wholesale liquidation, employee-discount arbitrage) and lists it on a marketplace without any dealer agreement or authorization from the brand. The legal lever against unauthorized sellers is generally weak: the "first sale doctrine" (US) and equivalents elsewhere hold that a buyer can resell a product they legally bought without further manufacturer permission, with narrow exceptions. Brand-protection enforcement against unauthorized sellers is therefore typically structural — source-of-supply disruption, material-difference complaints, Buy-Box defense — rather than purely legal.
Also known as: unauthorized reseller
Brand bidding
Brand bidding is the practice of a competitor purchasing a brand's trademark as a keyword in a paid-search platform (Google Ads, Bing Ads). When a user searches for the brand, the competitor's ad appears alongside or above the brand's organic listing — intercepting high-intent search traffic. In US case law and many jurisdictions, keyword targeting alone has been treated as permissible when the ad creative does not cause consumer confusion. Trademark use directly in the ad's headline or description is more clearly actionable; platforms (notably Google Ads) provide complaint workflows that restrict the trademark in ad copy without restricting the keyword.
Also known as: competitor brand keyword targeting; trademark bidding
Authorized-dealer safe list
An authorized-dealer safe list is a maintained, authoritative record of every seller a brand has authorized to sell its products on every channel where the brand sells. A complete safe list captures every legal entity name a partner trades under, every marketplace storefront they operate, every domain they sell through, every Google Shopping merchant ID, their authorized geography, their authorized product list, and contract metadata. The safe list is the structural difference between brand protection that helps and brand protection that hurts: without one, false-positive takedowns on legitimate authorized retailers can cost more than the violations the program was meant to remove.
Also known as: approved-seller allowlist; dealer allow-list
Buy Box (Amazon)
The Buy Box is the section of an Amazon product detail page where the "Add to Cart" and "Buy Now" buttons appear. When multiple sellers offer the same ASIN, Amazon's algorithm awards the Buy Box to one seller — that seller receives the bulk of organic traffic from the listing (estimates vary, but the Buy Box typically routes the majority of unit sales). Buy Box winning is determined by a combination of pricing, fulfillment performance (FBA vs. FBM, shipping speed), seller metrics, and account health. "Buy Box hijacking" is when an unauthorized or grey-market seller wins the Buy Box on a brand's ASIN, capturing sales the brand or its authorized retailers would otherwise have made.
Material differences doctrine
A doctrine in US trademark law — applied by courts in cases like K-Mart Corp. v. Cartier Inc. (1988) and subsequent decisions — that allows a trademark holder to challenge the resale of genuine goods when those goods are "materially different" from the authorized version. Common material differences include lack of warranty coverage, missing customer-service support, missing region-specific certifications, packaging differences, and serialized authentication mismatches. The doctrine is the primary legal tool for grey-market enforcement on US marketplaces. Application is fact-specific and varies by jurisdiction; consult qualified trademark counsel before filing a contested complaint.
First sale doctrine
A principle in US copyright and trademark law — and analogues in many other jurisdictions — that holds a buyer who lawfully acquired a product can resell it without the rights holder's further permission. The doctrine is what makes used-book stores, secondary marketplaces, and most reseller activity legal. Brand protection works around the first sale doctrine via narrow exceptions: counterfeit goods (not real, doctrine doesn't apply), goods materially different from the authorized version (the material differences doctrine), and goods sold under a contract (which binds the contracting parties, not strangers). For unauthorized resellers who simply bought retail and resell, the first sale doctrine generally protects them.
ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number)
An ASIN is a 10-character alphanumeric identifier assigned by Amazon to every product listing. ASINs are unique per Amazon marketplace (the same product has different ASINs on Amazon US vs. Amazon UK) and are the primary lookup key for product-level brand-protection workflows: every active listing of a SKU on Amazon shares the ASIN, regardless of which seller is offering it. Brand-protection tools track ASIN-level signals — every seller that joins or leaves the listing, every price change, every stock-state change — to detect new grey-market entrants, MAP violations, and Buy Box hijacks before they become entrenched.
Trademark complaint
A trademark complaint is a formal request to a platform (Amazon Brand Registry, Google Ads, Meta) or to a domain registrar requesting removal of content that infringes a registered trademark. Approved complaints typically require a registered trademark certificate (USPTO, EUIPO, UKIPO, or relevant national office), specific URLs of the offending content, and clear evidence of the infringement. Trademark complaints work best on counterfeit listings and on ad-copy uses of a competitor's trademark. They generally do not work against pure keyword targeting on a competitor's trademark, which is permitted under most platforms' policies.
Test purchase
A test purchase is a brand-controlled buy of a suspect listing — typically through an anonymous account, with proper documentation — for the purpose of verifying whether the unit shipped is genuine, grey-market, or counterfeit. Test purchases are the strongest form of evidence in counterfeit and grey-market enforcement: a side-by-side comparison of the test unit against an authorized unit, including packaging, batch codes, materials, and any serialized authentication, is the artifact most platforms accept as decisive. Brand-protection programs typically run test-buy budgets monthly, targeting the highest-risk listings surfaced by automated detection rather than every flagged listing.
Also known as: verification buy; mystery shop