On 6 May 2026 the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission published a Request for Information on counterfeit certification markings in the Federal Register at FR Doc. 2026-08781, Docket No. CPSC-2026-0100. The comment window closes 6 July 2026. The RFI is not a proposed rule — CPSC is gathering evidence before deciding whether additional enforcement, policy, or rulemaking action is warranted. The agency's parallel press release framed the action as a crackdown on fake safety labels used to move hazardous foreign products into U.S. homes, with particular attention to e-commerce channels and goods originating from the People's Republic of China.
The reason the RFI matters for the testing-and-certification community even before any new rule emerges is that the statutory prohibition CPSC is investigating is already in force, broader than most non-lawyers realize, and stronger than ordinary trademark enforcement.
What does the statute actually say?
The Consumer Product Safety Act at 15 U.S.C. § 2068(a)(12) makes it unlawful for any person to sell, offer for sale, distribute in commerce, or import into the United States any consumer product bearing a registered safety certification mark owned by an accredited conformity-assessment body, where the person knew or should have known that the mark was used in a manner unauthorized by the owner. The provision was added by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and is one of the prohibited acts that triggers the rest of the CPSA enforcement machinery.
Two features of the text are doing the real work. First, the prohibition applies to any accredited conformity-assessment body's registered mark — not solely to CPSC-administered marks. UL, ETL, CSA, and other NRTL marks are covered to the extent the certifying body is accredited and the mark is registered. Second, the scienter standard is constructive knowledge — the person knew or should have known — which reaches the importer that did not look closely, the e-commerce platform that hosted the listing, and the downstream distributor that took the certification claim at face value.
What enforcement does the statute already enable?
Three federal enforcement tools attach to a § 2068(a)(12) violation. Under § 2069, CPSC may seek civil penalties up to roughly $100,000 per violation (the figure is adjusted annually for inflation and capped at a statutory maximum per related-series of violations). Under § 2066, Customs and Border Protection may detain or refuse entry to imports that bear counterfeit certification marks, on referral from CPSC or on its own initiative under the CPSA import-screening authority. And under § 2068(a)(12)'s position within the prohibited-acts chapter, the violation triggers the full CPSA enforcement chain, including injunctive relief and the criminal-penalty provisions where knowing violations are alleged.
Compared to ordinary trademark infringement under the Lanham Act, the CPSA path delivers two operational advantages for an accredited certification body. The federal civil penalty figure is materially higher than most trademark-infringement actual-damages awards, and the CBP detention path runs through public-safety channels rather than through the private-litigation IP enforcement queue. The trademark claim is still available — but the safer-and-faster path for marks owned by accredited bodies is the CPSA path that this RFI is investigating.
What is CPSC asking the public to comment on?
The RFI identifies five categories of information CPSC wants from commenters.
- Prevalence — how common counterfeit safety-certification marks are in online and brick-and-mortar retail channels, broken down where possible by product category, sales channel, and country of origin.
- Safety risks — the specific hazards associated with counterfeit-marked products, with case data where commenters can supply it.
- Consumer reliance — how consumers actually use certification marks as a safety signal at the point of purchase, and whether disclosures or design changes to the marks themselves would reduce reliance on counterfeit versions.
- Financial impact — the cost to accredited bodies, compliant manufacturers, retailers, and CPSC enforcement programs.
- Coordinated schemes — whether counterfeit marks are being used as part of broader strategies involving falsified test reports, deceptive import practices, or related circumvention of U.S. consumer-product-safety requirements.
The press release frames the data-gathering as supporting evaluation of "additional enforcement, policy or regulatory actions," not as a commitment to any one of those tools. The most likely concrete outputs are a follow-on rulemaking on mark-registration procedures or a more aggressive use of the existing § 2068(a)(12) civil-penalty path; both are within CPSC's authority without further congressional action.
What does this mean for a U.S. test lab or certification body?
Three operational implications regardless of where the rulemaking lands. First, the existing statutory prohibition is a stronger enforcement tool for accredited bodies' marks than trademark law alone, and worth surfacing in conversations with clients about what their certification actually buys them — the CPSA penalty exposure for a counterfeiter is not theoretical. Second, the RFI is a structured opportunity for accredited bodies and U.S. labs to put data on the record about the financial cost of counterfeit marks; that data shapes what CPSC's next step looks like and whether the next step strengthens or merely formalizes the current framework. Third, any U.S. lab in the process of developing its own registered certification mark — a path open under ISO/IEC 17065 product-certification accreditation — should weigh CPSA enforcement availability as a real-world feature of the mark, not just a side benefit of accreditation.
How do parties file comments?
Comments are submitted at regulations.gov under Docket No. CPSC-2026-0100. CPSC encourages electronic submission via the Federal eRulemaking Portal; mail and confidential written submissions are also accepted via the Office of the Secretary at CPSC's Bethesda headquarters. The deadline is 6 July 2026; submissions are public on receipt unless filed under the confidential-business-information provisions.