December is retail’s Super Bowl, and for counterfeiters, it is prime time. Between Black Friday frenzies, Cyber Week traffic and the holiday gift rush, fake luxury floods marketplaces, parcel networks and social feeds. The result: brands lose revenue, consumers face safety and fraud risks, and regulators run to catch up. This seasonal spike isn’t new, but 2025 brought fresh accelerants: AI-powered scam pages, livestream selling, and a proliferation of platform storefronts that require smarter legal responses in 2026.
Why December? The mechanics are obvious but important. Demand spikes for high-value gifts; consumers rush for deals and often shortcut due diligence; sellers exploit cross-border shipping to hide origin; and platforms struggle to police millions of listings in real time. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized nearly 79 million counterfeit items in fiscal year 2025, with an MSRP value in the billions, a clear indication that fake goods remain a massive underworld economy timed to the holidays.
Online marketplaces and social commerce make the problem exponentially worse. Platforms increasingly automate seller onboarding and rely on algorithmic moderation, but counterfeiters now game the system with AI-generated storefronts and fake reviews. Industry monitors reported a sharp holiday surge in counterfeit listings last year, with fraud spreading into new categories and channels.
Live shopping adds another wrinkle. Real-time streams, where hosts sell goods directly to viewers, create rapid, hard-to-moderate commerce windows. Regulators and brands call enforcement a “whack-a-mole”: by the time a stream is flagged and removed, orders have been placed and goods en route. That ephemeral commerce is fertile ground for fakes to convert curiosity into transactions.
Platforms themselves are under growing scrutiny. In Europe this autumn, French authorities found several major marketplaces (ranging from global giants to fast-fashion apps) failed to prevent illicit products from being sold on their services, prompting national investigations and stronger enforcement threats. That regulatory pressure will only increase in 2026 as governments demand greater platform accountability.
The legal toolbox already includes several mechanisms, but their application is uneven. Trademark and copyright law remain the first line of defence: brand owners can initiate takedowns, pursue civil damages, or seek criminal referrals for large-scale infringements. Customs seizures disrupt supply, and criminal statutes can penalise the trafficking of counterfeit goods. Yet enforcement is expensive, cross-border, and reactive, often targeting the supply chain rather than the commercial systems that monetise those goods.
So where should counsel, brands, and policymakers focus in 2026?
- Treat December as a strategic enforcement window. Brands should plan seasonal enforcement sweeps well before Black Friday. That means pre-emptive marketplace listings scans, rapid takedown teams on standby, and coordinated customs alerts for high-risk SKUs. Proactive monitoring reduces the short-term conversion of searches into counterfeit purchases.
- Invest in digital provenance and anti-fraud tech. Serialization, QR-based provenance tags, and blockchain proofs are no longer boutique experiments; they’re consumer-facing tools that reduce doubt at the point of sale. When paired with AI detection tools that flag suspicious seller behaviour, brands can more quickly deter and detect fake listings.
- Work with platforms on live-sale protocols. Platforms must build stronger controls for livestream commerce: verified seller badges, escrowed payments until post-delivery confirmation, and rapid dispute resolution. Brands should negotiate these protections into partnership agreements or threaten delisting for repeat offenders.
- Educate consumers (and influencers). Influencer holiday hauls are powerful marketing and liability traps. Public instances in which creators’ “luxury” gifts are questioned for authenticity are already in the news, showing how quickly perception can shift. Brands and platforms should fund consumer education campaigns that teach shoppers to verify serial numbers, receipts and seller credibility before buying.
- Lobby for sharper platform accountability rules. Regulatory moves in 2025 show the appetite for action. Governments are beginning to hold marketplaces responsible for policing illicit goods; pushing for clearer notice-and-action standards, record-keeping obligations, and civil penalties for systemic failures would align incentives across the supply chain.
- Use customs as a proactive partner. CBP’s public holiday warnings are more than PR — customs seizures disrupt the economics of counterfeits. Brands should keep customs units furnished with updated product lists and suspected shipper intelligence so enforcement targets the most harmful flows.
Ultimately, this is not a problem that litigation alone will fix. The counterfeit season thrives on speed, opacity, and low margins; conditions that respond to architectural fixes as much as courtroom wins. For 2026, good lawyering will pair courtroom readiness with product-level provenance, platform rules negotiated in commercial contracts, and consumer-facing verification that makes authenticity the easier choice.
For consumers: this holiday season, the two golden rules remain true: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is, and always buy from reputable, traceable sources. For brands and counsel, the task is to make authenticity frictionless, enforcement immediate, and platforms accountable, so that December returns to being a celebration of commerce rather than a boomtime for crime.
References
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “CBP reminds shoppers: beware of counterfeits this holiday season,” Nov 12, 2025. (Customs and Border Protection)
MarqVision, “Inside the Holiday Counterfeit Surge: Key Trends,” Nov 21, 2025. (marqvision.com)
Reuters, “France finds Wish, Temu, AliExpress, eBay broke rules on illicit products,” Nov 14, 2025. (Reuters)
AP News, “More than 3,000 fake Gibson guitars seized at Los Angeles port,” 2024. (AP News)
SocialMediaToday, “TikTok outlines latest measures to protect in-app shoppers,” Nov 2025. (Social Media Today)
