1000's of Counterfeit Items Attached to our Brand Registered ASIN numbers

[Skip_N_Whistle]

We are a registered brand on Amazon and have been for over 3 years.

We have 934 t shirts which we design and manufacture listed on Amazon with size and color variations for each.

In the last 2 days, nearly all of our FBM product variations have been hijacked by 3-5 brand new foreign sellers.

These sellers appear to be based in the UK, we are based in Louisiana USA.

We design, screen print and exclusively sell 100% of our products and do not sell wholesale to anyone. We have been selling on Amazon for over 3 years very successfully.

We have a registered trademark, registered copyrights, and have an established lawsuit in federal court in which we won against a seller for doing the same thing 3 years ago.

We have filed 2 infringement reports through Amazon for over 70 ASIN that have been hijacked. We have over 3000 ASIN that are currently hijacked and more are happening hourly. We can not possibly report every single hijacked ASIN through the infringement portal since there are 1000’s and growing.

These foreign sellers are currently attached to over 300,000 individual product pages all across Amazon. Most of the products have many variations. So, this is affecting our brand as well as 1000’s of other registered brands on Amazon.

We have reached out to Amazon to protect our brand and detach these counterfeiters. We need to have our well established brand GATED to prevent this from happening again and again. We have gotten nowhere in the last 2 days.

My question is, how can we get someone higher up at Amazon regarding protection from a high level counterfeiting ring, that is presently attached to millions of ASIN variations on Amazon. How can we get our brand GATE without having to get our attorney involved?

Why is it taking so long to shut down these counterfeit sellers who have attached to our listings, and who are deceiving Amazon customers?

These guys are committing copyright infringement, as well as trademark infringement.

Can someone please reach out to us? Thank you.

[Lake]

Yes

There are many other threads on this subject.

They counterfeit your stuff because they can.

Most buyers do not complain.

Amazon is not gating on request

You can play whack-a-mole or can consider whether this is not an appropriate venue for your merchandise.

Nothing is happening quickly because the problem is very large and Amazon has limited resources which are being deployed in it’s efforts to protect major brand owners who are NOT selling on Amazon and subject to the participation agreement.

I am not unsympathetic, just aware of the reality.

[turbosnail]

THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO,

If you believe a seller on Amazon is infringing upon your trademark rights, we ask you provide all of the following to our Copyright and Trademark Agent:

• The ASIN/ISBN of the item’s detail page and the product title
• The store or business name of the seller you are reporting
• A concise explanation of the violation
• Proof of the violation:
  –Amazon.com Order ID of a test buy that confirms the violation
  –Copy of your trademark registration certificate
  –Proof of purchase for the product’s UPC bar code
  –Photos of the item(s) you received in the test buy
• Your address, telephone number, and e-mail address
• A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate, and that you are the trademark owner or authorized to act on the trademark owner’s behalf.

By email: copyright@amazon.com

By Mail:
Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108

Courier address:
Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
410 Terry Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109-5210
USA

Great information here. I would ask my attorney to type up this letter for free as I flirt with her. Anyhow any decent attorney would charge a normal 2 hours rate for this.( $350-500 per hour).

Just give them a copy of these requirements and tell them that you need a general letter so leave the defendant’s name and test buy order # blank then it can be use multiple time for pest prevention purpose. Then make lot of copies and notarized for a couple bucks every time a new pest shows up.

[GraceofGod]

THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO,

If you believe a seller on Amazon is infringing upon your trademark rights, we ask you provide all of the following to our Copyright and Trademark Agent:

• The ASIN/ISBN of the item’s detail page and the product title
• The store or business name of the seller you are reporting
• A concise explanation of the violation
• Proof of the violation:
  –Amazon.com Order ID of a test buy that confirms the violation
  –Copy of your trademark registration certificate
  –Proof of purchase for the product’s UPC bar code
  –Photos of the item(s) you received in the test buy
• Your address, telephone number, and e-mail address
• A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate, and that you are the trademark owner or authorized to act on the trademark owner’s behalf.

By email: copyright@amazon.com

By Mail:
Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108

Courier address:
Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
410 Terry Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109-5210
USA

[turbosnail]

> 3 years ago on amazon was a 100 years ago in internet time.
>
> now that amazon has sold out to the Chinese any US sellers hope of survival is just to sell items that cannot be counterfeited.
>
> sad but true

Name one thing that can’t be counterfeit? Space shuttle? sorry, theirs looks just like ours.

Or how about precious gemstone that found in the U.S? Lets see… sellers in Oregon are selling Sunstone from china…

[anonn]

China has 1.3 BILLION people

How hard do you think it is for any of them to buy a printer?

amazon streamlines shipping direct from China to FBA. The Chinese government even subsidizes it because they themselves have proclaimed they are in an economic war with America and will cheat at every possible instance to win. The problem is China doesn’t play by the same rules as us even though they sell on the same platform (blame el Jeffe for that). China doesn’t have the same “morals” as the US because communistic countries don’t believe in “ownership” of ideas like patents and trademarks. They believe all IP should belong to everyone (which is ludicrously insane, but’s it’s what they believe and profess).

Why would you EVER consider competing against the Chinese +now?+

3 years ago on amazon was a 100 years ago in internet time.

now that amazon has sold out to the Chinese any US sellers hope of survival is just to sell items that cannot be counterfeited.

sad but true

[Skip_N_Whistle]

The issue is that these fraudulent sellers are connected to every single ASIN that we have.

That is over 3000 individual ASIN, spread out over 7 or more fake sellers attached to our listings.

That means that every size and color variation of every shirt that we make and sell, has 7 or more fraudulent foreign sellers with zero feedback ratings attached to them.

This also means that when they lower their price from ours, they win the buy box and sale by default which risks terrible reviews on our legit products made by our family business in Louisiana.

This means that 1000’s of our products are essentially hacked. It makes no sense to do test buys from counterfeiters who can not possibly have our product. It would cost us over $900,000 just to buy one of each variation that they are attached to.

I have sent Amazon notices for 3 full days regarding this issue and talked to them on the phone in India of course. Nothing has happened yet.

We have NEVER sold our products wholesale and need our brand restricted to only allow authorized sellers that we approve first. Amazon offers this to 1000’s of brands. We just don’t know how to get it for ours in order to prevent this. We’d be thrilled to expand our brand wholesale but not until our brand is protected and “gated” on Amazon.

The worst part about all of this in the big picture, is this:

There are 7 fraudulent sellers, (who have just started selling on Amazon with zero feedback) and attached themselves to our listings. Each one of these sellers has also attached to over 300,000 other product pages on Amazon that we do not own. If you click to see what these guys are offering in their stores, you see how staggering it is! For each of the 300,000 products they have latched onto across Amazon, there are multiple variations. So…each of these fraudulent sellers is presently tied into MILLIONS OF ASIN!!!

This means that Amazon is continuing to allow COUNTERFEIT sellers to deceive MILLIONS of customers over 72 hours after being made aware of the problem.

We are already an established, trademarked brand, and took a company to federal court in the US for doing this very thing to us 3 years ago. We have street cred, and Amazon should take this seriously. We want to expand our products on Amazon and grow our business as we have for 16 years, but we need to have protection before uploading our entire catalogue to Amazon and seeking out resellers to work with.

Someone with connections please help us as we head into Christmas!

Thank you.

[Hit_the_Books]

The issue is that these fraudulent sellers are connected to every single ASIN that we have.
…
This means that Amazon is continuing to allow COUNTERFEIT sellers to deceive MILLIONS of customers over 72 hours after being made aware of the problem.

Someone with connections please help us as we head into Christmas!

Thank you.

I really feel for those affected by the onslaught of scammers. My guess is that Amazon is not going to do much unless/until a big lawsuit or the media makes these shenanigans known to the American public.

[SUNDANCE]

All you have to do is search the forum for:
Chinese counterfeit
Or
Foreign counterfeit

To get more posts than you can read in a year.
This is an ongoing problem that either Amazon won’t stop or doesn’t know how to stop.

God forbid a US seller logs into their account using another sellers pc…their done!
But these foreign sellers can create dozens of accounts and keep uploading hundreds of thousands of listings that the don’t have any merchandise nor do they ever plan on shipping anything.

When they get shut down they are back up under another name in a day.
It makes buyer not trust Amazon anymore.

Amazon is at least trying to require ungaiting for some categories and brands but it doesn’t seem to slow the fraudulent foreign seller.

Many suggestions have been put forth, the easiest in my opinion is to limit the “just launched” seller to 100-500 listings. If they perform well the limit rises. eBay is a example of such a policy.

[CanadaRAM]

If your products qualify for the Made in USA program, start putting that into your listings and on your labels. Then you have a completely separate line of attack through Customs to stop the imports at the border - As well as more ammunition for Amazon takedowns.

Check the information at ftc dot gov

[jacobbigshow]

Skip N Whistle I am having the same exact problem! We all need to start pressuring AMAZON into doing something, their current system is not working, they have access to advance software which can find if a seller is a bot, stop new sellers from listing anywhere without invoices, gate everything, sure it will be harder to sell, but we sellers who has invoices and work hard to make the page, buy or make the products, want our pages to be protected from scammers.

[anonn]

>
> I really feel for those affected by the onslaught of scammers. My guess is that Amazon is not going to do much unless/until a big lawsuit or the media makes these shenanigans known to the American public.

like Mercedes-Benz or Apple? Believe me, it’s coming, and there will be many more soon to follow.

apple fanboys are as loyal to apple as amazon fanboys are to amazon and the apple market is not going to be happy when they hear that amazon is selling counterfeit apple product.

same goes for Mercedes-Benz

[now_i_know]

>
I really feel for those affected by the onslaught of scammers. My guess is that Amazon is not going to do much unless/until a big lawsuit or the media makes these shenanigans known to the American public.

like Mercedes-Benz or Apple? Believe me, it’s coming, and there will be many more soon to follow.

apple fanboys are as loyal to apple as amazon fanboys are to amazon and the apple market is not going to be happy when they hear that amazon is selling counterfeit apple product.

same goes for Mercedes-Benz

WTF +IS+ taking the media so long. Are they not aware of these issues, do they not care, or are they afraid of Amazon suing them?

[Rushdie]

Better to stick with one thread per topic, so responders have all the info in one place: HIGH NUMBER of fraudulent sellers hijacking our branded products.

Be that as it may, did you change the status to +inactive+ on the listings that were affected? Only appears to be 150+ listings (not counting the numerous size variations), none of which have piggy-backers.

+If+ you were able to have Amazon resolve the problem, would you mind sharing for the benefit of others?

[Glenn_Amazon]

Greetings,

As this post is a duplicate post this thread will be locked. In order to maintain an effective and useful forum it is important to only create one thread per issue you have. Thank you so much for your understanding.

You can continue to respond and get assistance via the the thread below:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=3773774

Thank you so much for your time and have a lovely day.

-Glenn S

[system]