NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) - Livestream shopping where

buyers and sellers transact in real-time video is growing in the

United States while technology to police counterfeit goods has

so far not kept up, a situation that makes it easier for fake

goods to flood the market, patent lawyers said.

Livestream shopping has been popularized by e-commerce sites

like Alibaba.com and TikTok's sister company Douyin after

dominating the retail scene in China.

In the U.S., TikTok merchants hawk jewelry, pre-owned

Louis Vuitton handbags and $2 lip glosses during hours-long

video sessions. Sellers' streams can have dozens to thousands of

viewers who ask about product materials, prices and

availability.

Copyright violations in live video are difficult to track. In

general, e-commerce infringement enforcement can often feel like

a game of "whack-a-mole" for lawyers and software companies who

monitor the internet due to the swelling volume of violations.

In one example, software firm Red Points spotted at least 4.6

million instances of global copyright violations in 2023, up

from 4 million a year earlier.

Amazon ( AMZN ), the largest U.S. online marketplace, identified and

seized 7 million counterfeit products from its marketplace

sellers in 2023, up from 6 million in 2022, according the

company's brand protection reports.

Livestreaming is "haven for infringement until the detection

and enforcement catches up to that mode of sales" said Luke

DeMarte, an intellectual property lawyer at Michael Best &

Friedrich, referring to live shopping.

TikTok and Amazon ( AMZN ) both said they have advanced technology in

place to stop merchants from selling fakes. TikTok said it

monitors live video with a mixture of algorithms and humans and

Amazon ( AMZN ) said it uses humans to monitor livestream shopping.

Livestream sales on the web have promise. Americans will

spend $1.32 trillion on U.S. e-commerce this year, according to

eMarketer, a research firm. Live-commerce could reach 5% of that

spending by 2026 as more traditional retailers including Macy's

, Inditex's Zara, Nordstrom ( JWN ) and Kohl's

adopt the marketing technique, according to Coresight Research.

Some lawyers and the brands they represent use machine

learning software to search e-commerce platforms for possible

infringement in pictures, product descriptions and

advertisements, but live videos bring added challenges.

"By the time you see infringing products being sold on a

TikTok live stream and it gets taken down, you should expect

that at least some sales occurred in the interim," DeMarte said.

DeMarte and other U.S. trademark lawyers said the live

nature of livestream transactions makes it hard to identify and

weed out counterfeits and fakes despite growth of new

technologies aimed at detecting infringement.

Retailers that launch shoppable video need to "make sure

that they have the mechanisms to prevent criminal activity or

monitor it in real-time," Kari Kammel, director of the Center

for Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection at Michigan State

University.

Artificial intelligence and algorithms can currently spot

still images and text that infringe on brands' copyrights and

trademarks, the lawyers and software firms say. Similarly,

e-commerce platforms often use AI and algorithms to block

third-party vendors from posting counterfeit merchandise.

But the technology to scan violations in video is scarce.

Small business attorney Michelle Murphy said she receives

five to ten notifications every day from an AI vendor that

tracks intellectual property infringement across still images

listed on Etsy, eBay, Amazon ( AMZN ) and TikTok. Out of the hundreds of

alerts she's received, none of them have flagged infringement on

shoppable video.

Keeping counterfeits off their e-commerce sites is critical

to the future of major U.S. retailers. TikTok has technology it

says can detect potential infringement in live video streams,

according to a TikTok Shop spokesperson. When content is flagged

as infringing, it is removed and sent to a human moderator for

review, the spokesperson said.

Some third-party software vendors said they currently team

up with TikTok Shop, generally by sharing information about

suspected counterfeiters, to spot and police instances of

infringement on the platform's live-shopping videos.

Amazon ( AMZN ) expanded shoppable video to its streaming platforms

Prime Video and Freevee in April. Its live feeds cover various

product categories including electronic accessories, apparel and

home goods that are advertised by influencers and reality TV

stars.

Amazon ( AMZN ) uses machine learning to scan its website for

counterfeits; however, its livestreaming feature is manually

moderated, the company said. The e-commerce giant requires that

livestreamers only show products that are available on

Amazon.com ( AMZN ), which are subject to its machine learning scans.

Other retailers hosting livestream shopping including Dyson

only sell their brands' products or those that they hold a

license to sell.