Hi all! (especially @Pax_Amazon_old @Schadenfreudist @Oneida @Arthur_Amazon since you guys seem to be the experts on these kinds of topics)

You’ll have to bear with me as this may be a bit long and winded:

Our listing was removed about a month ago now due to a patent infringement claim. We received the following email from Amazon:

Hello,

We removed some of your listings because we received a report from a rights owner that they infringe the following patent(s):

– Patent number “^&$(@^$”

The listings we removed are at the bottom of this message.

Why 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 better understanding what is causing this, please search for “Intellectual Property Violations” in Seller Central Help (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/201361070).

How do I reactivate my listing?
To reactivate your listing you may provide one of the following:

1. A letter of authorization or a licensing agreement from the manufacturer or Rights Owner demonstrating that your product sales 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 believe there has been an error, please tell us why. Your explanation should include the following information:
– Proof that you have never sold the reported product. We will investigate to determine if an error occurred.

OR

– Explanation of why you were warned in error. We will investigate to determine if an error occurred.

What happens if I do not provide the requested information?
If we do not receive the requested information, your listings will remain inactive.

If you do not provide the information within 90 days, you will receive a request to remove the inventory associated with these listing per our removal policy (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/202000820). Failure to address this request can lead to destruction of your inventory.

Just some background info: our product is a white label product that we sourced from China and is one of the best sellers in its category.

We looked up the patent and discovered (to our shock) that it indeed resembles the product that we, along with numerous other sellers in our niche, are selling. At the time of sourcing, we were unaware of the patent’s existence. The patent was filed in March and published in June (we started selling on Amazon in June).

The rights owner information provided at the bottom of Amazon’s email (which I’ve excluded) is clearly fake "lastnamefirstname.lawyer@gmail.com".

After further digging, we discovered that the true patent rights’ owner is one of our competitors who also sources the same product from the same manufacturer. So naturally, we got in touch with our manufacturer to express our outrage, who supplied us with a letter of manufacturer’s authorization and got in touch with the rights owner who also supplied us with a letter of authorization as per Amazon’s above request. “Easy done” we thought and sent them off to Amazon.

In the meantime, we consulted an attorney who advised that if we can prove that this product was for sale by another party before the filing date in March (which it was), the patent is invalid. At this stage we did not wish to go down this costly legal route believing we could prove to Amazon that we have authorization from the actual rights owner to sell it.

A few days later we received the following response from Amazon:

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.

Has your listing been deactivated in error?
If you believe there has been an error, please tell us why. Your explanation should include the following information:

– How your listing(s) have not violated the brand’s intellectual property.

So again, we went back to our manufacturer who supplied us with an invoice, which we sent off to Amazon again along with both letters of authorization.

We also suspected that the complaint was filed by the actual rights owner (our competitor) so we pressed our manufacturer to ask him to retract his complaint, but of course he’s playing dumb and denies ever making the complaint. We also sent a request to retract the complaint to the bogus .lawyer@gmail email address with no response.

Fast forward a couple of days and we once again get the same templated response from Amazon. I then forward this on to an Amazon account manager whose details I dug up from a previous correspondence I had made with her. She promises to forward it onto the review team. A few days pass… then same templated response from Amazon.

Interestingly, this stage we also noticed that a listing belonging to one of our other competitors, that is selling very well, was taken down - showing as "currently unavailable’, identical to ours. Yet our competitor who is the rights owner has now created multiple listings in our niche of the same product in order to drown out the competition.

We then enlist the help of a new attorney who has experience in dealing with Amazon account issues. He drafts letters to Amazon using a different angle - the complaint should be disregarded as it clearly comes from a bogus email address, plus we have letters of authorization from the real rights owner. We sent this off to Amazon … same templated response comes back.

I then contacted the Amazon account manager again for assistance. She agreed that the docs we have provided should be sufficient and forwards them to the review team. A few days later… same templated response appears from Amazon along with the final email from the account manager stating:

The team replied to me that the right owner is real and that the documents you got from the supplier are illegitimate.

I cannot asked them for further details.

Thank you for your understanding.

What is “illegitimate” supposed to mean? The docs came from and are signed and stamped by the manufacturer and rights owner themselves!

We then ask our attorney to compose an escalation email that we send along with a POA (as we know Amazon sometimes also requests these) off to jeff@amazon. Over a week passes… we finally receive the same templated response from the Seller Performance Team.

We’re really at our wits end with this back and forth. To summarize, we’ve tried every angle, sent the docs in multiple formats (PDF, jpeg, png) and feel like we’ve exhausted all options, yet aren’t any closer to discovering what Amazon actually want from us. Is there something we are missing? Is there some special language that we need to speak to Amazon with?

Thanks so much for reading this and thanks in advance to anyone who can shed some light on this issue