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Help with an infringement on trademark complaint
My listing was deactivated after receiving a complaint for trademark infringement. I sourced the product from an authorized distributor that purchased it directly from the manufacturer, a big electronics/cell phone company.
The listing were the ASIN currently lives was created by a third party company that is an FBM on the listing. This company filed a trademark of their logo in relation to the earbud and other accessories, but it is not part of the product in any way. Here is what their trademark description says: “The mark consists of a series of lines beside a smartphone displaying mechanical gears with the words “company name” to the right of it in a stacked arrangement.”
This company is a small cell phone shop in Florida, and I believe they did this to manipulate who can sell on that listing as they can deem themselves as being the brand owners, when they really are not.
Do you have any advice on how I could address this? Below is the original notice I received from Amazon:
Hello,
We received a report from a rights owner that the products listed at the end of this email are inauthentic.
The rights owner is asserting that the products infringe the following trademark:
–Trademark number :xxxWhy did this happen?
One or more of your listings may be infringing the intellectual property rights of others.We’re here to help.
If you need help understanding why your listings may infringe the intellectual property rights of others, please search for “Intellectual Property Policy” in Seller Central Help (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/201361070).How do I reactivate my listing?
Please provide the following to reactivate your listings:
– An invoice, letter of authorization or a licensing agreement from the manufacturer or Rights Owner demonstrating that your products are lawful to notice-dispute@amazon.com. External links are not accepted. For security reasons, we only accept attachments in the following file formats: .jpeg, .jpg, .pjpeg, .gif, .png, .tiff.Have your listings been removed in error?
If you have never sold or listed the product, please reach out to us and tell us.
If you think that the rights owner has made an error in sending the notice, please reach out to the rights owner and ask for a retraction of the notice. To retract the complaint, the rights owner must send the retraction to us at notice-dispute@amazon.com or use the retraction function in Brand Registry.These are the rights owner’s contact details:
–xxx
–xxxWe can only accept retractions if the rights owner clearly states that they made an error. For any other reason, please explain to us why you were warned in error so that we can investigate the case.
What happens if I do not provide the requested information?
Your listings will remain inactive. We reserve the right to destroy the inventory associated with this violation if proof of authenticity is not provided within 90 days.ASIN: xxx
Infringement type: Counterfeit
Trademark asserted:xxx
Complaint ID: xxx
64 replies
Seller_8Wfpcf6cHQaPy
If the other party is manipulating a popular brand to limit who can sell on the listing through manipulation, I would call it to the attention of the main brand.
What is the main brand?
Seller_3N7yVnTXPzLkL
Cannot offer an opinion without the ASIN
Even if it is likely that the Catalog Page violates policy, you may be guilty of infringement,
Many sellers do not take proper care to avoid all of the traps left by other sellers and pay a high price.
Seller_dqVIaIi6xarNS
Wasn’t there already guidance issued by Amazon about properly using the the brand field (in this case “by Amazing Gadgets”?
I recall it saying that listings that have improper or inaccurate brand information will be suspended.
Looking at the DP the brand should say “by AKG Tuning”. This is a violation if i am correct about Amazons notice regarding Brands.
This is the direction you want to travel. The rights owner has a trademark on “Amazing Gadgets” which is registered to Phone Rehab LLC which was granted about a year ago.
Start pounding home the issue of improper use of the brand field. They are not allowed to do this according to Amazons own rules about the use of the brand field in the DT.
Seller_Il65fnhmzB1hn
You have made a big mistake, if you indeed have permission from Samsung to resell this product on Amazon, which I believe you don’t… Because whoever sold you those units probably has no permission to resell to other sellers who sell online. The permission is to sell probably at a brick and mortar store.
I know someone from Samsung who can verify this. Also your mistake was not creating a listing with the UPC number of the headphones retail package, then Amazon would have pointed you in the right direction.
This Amazing Gadgets store is selling counterfeit products from Alibaba… I suspect this will not end good for them or anyone who list there on those listings by Amazing Products.
Pax_Amazon_old
Hello @KC_BL,
Pax here to provide some assistance.
Intellectual property complaints can be stressful to receive for sure, but they are appealable.
Do you have the actual brand owner’s authorization to list and sell their brand? Having sourced it from an authorized distributor, while good for authenticity purposes, may not protect you from intellectual property complaints. Some brand owners require sellers to seek out authorization directly from them to sell their particular brands through various outlets. This is to prevent buyer confusion regarding the source of the product. Therefore, in regards to your appeal, you will need to inform us whether you have authorization directly from the actual brand rights owner.
As @Rushdie mentioned,
while this situation is under review and an appeal is underway. Your
@BestFriend provides you a good start to assist in correcting the product detail page. However, you still want to appeal with a plan of action that addressed the reason for the complaint as well as how you will prevent complaints in the future.
This format is proven to be effective:
-
Root cause of the complaint: You received the intellectual property complaint due to being listed on an already existing listing that contained incorrect information. However, did you seek authorization from the rights owner? Did you perform an intellectual property ownership search prior to listing the item? Were you aware you needed the brand owners’ approval?
-
Immediate actions taken: what actions have you taken to resolve the complaint and get everything resolved? Who have you contacted?
-
Preventative measures: How will you ensure you do not face the same issues in the future? How often will you audit the listings you are listed against? How do you check for intellectual property? Will you improve your business practice to attain brand owner authorization going forward? What method/system will you utilize to check for intellectual property ownership? How will you improve your sourcing methods and how will you vet your suppliers? Ensuring you know the supply chain will be beneficial.
I hope this provides you with some guidance as to how you may appeal properly. I would also like to thank the assistance and cooperation from the forums community. I can see that you all have made a difference in this seller’s life and business practice.
Best,
Pax
Seller_08aFkqNNqPXQ5
Alright, here I am again to see if you guys can continue to assist.
@Rushdie, @Pax_Amazon_old, @AlphaSeven
Given the lack of help from my supplier, which has now advised me to email Jeff Bezzos twice a day until I get a response (I am not going to do this), I gave up on getting the listing reinstated.
So with that said, I have emailed amazon (seller-performance and dispute email addresses) more than a handful of times admitting guilt, saying we won’t do this again and just asking if we can have our units back. But we get the same exact scripted email asking for us to provide proof that we did not infringe the trademark policy. My emails are clearly saying we did, and we accept guilt for it, so I don’t know how to get out from this infinite loop.
Do you guys have any advice?
See my email:
Dear notice-dispute team,
Thank you for your response.
As we outlined on our previous email, we listed our product under the incorrect ASIN, one which we did not have the IP rights to. That was caused by an internal processing error with the UPC code that we received and led us to the incorrect listing, a generic one owned by Amazing Gadgets, instead of the original that is owned by Samsung. We have taken action to avoid this from happening again, and at this time request the ability to remove our inventory from your warehouse so we can return it to our vendor. We do not want to pursue the ability to sell it under the listing that we have been blocked on, we just kindly request the ability to get the product back.
We hope you consider our request as the monetary value of the inventory is high and is greatly impacting our business today.
Thank you
Amazon’s response:
Hello,
Thank you for your message. We cannot accept your appeal because it does not address the report we received from the rights owner. Please provide the following information so we can process your appeal:
– Proof of product authenticity (e.g., invoice, Order ID, licensing agreement, letter of authorization). It must clearly prove that your products do not infringe any intellectual property rights. Please send this information, any other documentation, and a list of impacted ASINs to notice-dispute@amazon.com.
Where do I send this information?
Send this information to notice-dispute@amazon.com.
Seller_08aFkqNNqPXQ5
Fast forward a couple of months and our account has now been suspended. This is my latest POA to Amazon, for which we also got denied. I am pasting this here to see if any of you could provide feedback on what could be improved to increase our odds of being reinstated. At this point we no longer care about the unsold inventory, we just want to forget this listing ever existed and be able to continue selling our other SKUs.
Blockquote
ASIN: B07YCV44XQ
Title: OEM Amazing 2019 Stereo Headphones for Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Note 10+ S10 Plus S9 Note 8 S9+ S10e S10 Braided Cable - Designed by AKG - with Microphone (Black) USB-C Connector
Infringement Type: Counterfeit
Date: Apr 3, 2020To whom it may concern:
I am the principle of and am responding to the recent notification that my account is under review due to an IP Complaint.
Following this plan of action, we hope to keep our seller privileges active so we can continue selling on your platform.
A. Root cause of the issue:
My company was reported for having infringed intellectual property rights against the brand owner after we listed the above-mentioned product on their listing.
After a full investigation we found that
We listed our product under the incorrect ASIN / product page.
We did not realize when listing the product that the listing belonged to a different registered brand, as we only looked at the product image and title/description information.
The product we purchased did not contain the trademark logo on the packaging that was created by the listing’s brand owner.
For this reason, the intellectual property violation was raised by ‘ Amazing Gadgets’ (brand owner) and we accept full responsibility for it.
B. Actions taken to resolve the issue:
The following actions were taken to resolve the issue:
We have deleted the item from our inventory despite still having units that were not sold
We have responded to the brand owner acknowledging our mistake and noted that we will not attempt to sell our product under their listing or in any other selling platform.
We have requested a removal order of the stranded units so they can be removed from the Amazon platform entirely.
C. Details on how you will prevent future complaints:
This infringement has taught us valuable lessons on how to properly conduct business on Amazon and the following measures have now been put in place so we can avoid this from happening again:
We have focused diligently on Amazon’s policies and procedures, including, but not only to authenticity and IP complaints. Some of the topics we reviewed were the following:
- ‘Intellectual Property for Sellers’
- ‘Intellectual Property for Policy for Sellers – FAQ about trademarks’
- ‘Intellectual Property for Policy for Sellers – FAQ about Copyrights’
- ‘Intellectual Property for Policy for Sellers – FAQ about Patents
- ‘Best Practices in Product Authenticity and Quality’
In doing so we learned about the different Intellectual Property categories, and that we had a ‘Counterfeiting’ violation. We now know that a trademark can be as small as a word, symbol or design placed either on the product or its packaging, and that makes that product unique to the brand owner. If we ever decide to sell a product that has a trademark registered against it, we will seek authorization from the brand owner before listing it.
To ensure differences are not missed, we have started to perform test buys thru our suppliers before committing to a purchase order that will be listed on Amazon. Test buy units are being sent to our own facility so they can be thoroughly reviewed (product and packaging) and we can identify any discrepancies in comparison to the listed item before we have them sent to Amazon.
I as the owner have personally trained my employees on Amazon’s IP policies and how to verify if the intended listing is the correct one. This includes checking the product title, description, brand owner and the product images on the page. This will ensure that our products are listed on the appropriate page, ensuring that it belongs to the correct brand, that we were authorized by to sell.
Before listing any new product, we will search the ‘ United States Patent and Trademark Office ’ database to find out if any patents or trademarks have been filed on the item we are planning to sell. If positive, we will seek additional authorization from the listed owner.
We have no other items being sold on Amazon that originate from the supplier that provided us with the trouble item listed on this appeal.
In closing we plead that you kindly consider our appeal so that we can maintain our selling privileges active. While negative, this experience has led us to make improvements to our ways of working and to study Amazon’s policies and procedures with more care.
We are new sellers on the platform and ran into the issue due to misinformation and poor due diligence prior to listing the product, but never in bad faith. While 0 is always the goal, this is the only mistake we have committed thus far after having sold 35 other SKUs.
We accept full responsibility for this error and guarantee that it will not be repeated. We also would like to apologize to Amazon for the policy violation and to ‘Amazing Gadgets’ for listing our item under their product page when we did not have their authorization.
Sincerely
