105029EFundamentals: A novel AI solution to evaluate and identify online sales of counterfeit goodsClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UK"Substandard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit goods are a significant global challenge with a market value reaching $1.7trillion in 2018\. ~5% of goods imported to EU are fakes, largely originating from middle-emerging countries, with China the top producer. Counterfeiters hurt big companies, large pharma, luxury goods manufacturers and take advantage of consumer trust in trademarks and brand names to undermine economies and danger lives. The wider economic effect of fake branded goods removes €8.1B/year in revenue from Europe's government. It is however a market challenge that all regulatory authorities are failing to address. The key to addressing this global challenge is greater intelligence around identification&evaluation of sites selling counterfeit, fake&illegal products. Current initiatives to detect such products include prevention through labelling/authentication (complex technology, requires product understanding) with best-in-class intelligence for the sites, data harvesting tools (Data-as-a-Service), only providing insight of target websites, large data output with many law enforcement agencies relying on retrospective manual searches. No reliable solution is yet available that can deliver real-time insights, gather prosecution evidence, display site content and evaluate legitimacy/authenticity of online products. Addressing this gap, EFundamentals to date have successfully developed and proven a proof-of-concept prototype (IUK funded project) software solution able to identify, harvest globally and authenticate all online sites and their products in real-time. This includes information on URL's, domains, site owners, delivery methods (e.g. DHL), payment methods, prices, suppliers and images of products. This has been achieved by using the EF 'Discover', 'Gather' and 'Extract' technology concepts combined with unique software algorithms to eliminate 'false positives'. This project aims to further this to: 1.Advance the crawler and gather technology employing machine learning and AI to automatically capture and record website data delivering a polished UI /UX 'self-service' commercial product for the reporting of illegal sites and drugs products for pharmaceutical companies, law enforcememt and regulators to evidentiary standard. 2.Extend this technology to identify, interogate and report on illegal goods such as luxury items, software and commodities (e.g. printer inks), the sites that sell them and a detailed dashboard, providing 'Brand Protection' services. EFundamentals are well place to exploit this opportunity as they have already commmercialised their sales-building, profit-driving, insight engine for FMCG products. With Innovate UK support, a 12-month programme of experimental development is require to advance both these initiatives to a commercial prototype before fully validating the solutions in trials with confirmed trial partners to commercialise in 2020\."