How to avoid infringement when selecting products? Two major infringement cases on Amazon, one article will help you stay away from infringement!

So how can Amazon sellers prevent and protect the security of their accounts from the perspective of product infringement and infringement to avoid accidents? In this article, Zhaodanmao will explain in detail how to deal with infringement, copycat sales, and complaints. This article will help you understand the infringement framework and deal with infringement problems. It is recommended to save it!

Intellectual property rights mainly include copyrights, trademarks, and patents . Sellers operating on the Amazon platform are protected by Amazon's global anti-counterfeiting team . Once there is an infringement on the intellectual property rights of a brand or other rights owner, the seller may lose sales privileges and even have other legal consequences!

Because Amazon ’s primary goal is to prevent counterfeit goods from being listed on the Amazon store and actively solve the counterfeit problem that sellers are worried about !

• Copyright Infringement:

Original works owned by brands, such as videos, movies, songs, books, musical works, video games and paintings, are protected by copyright. The author of an original work usually owns the copyright of the work. The focus of copyright protection is original works. In fact, whether or not the copyright is registered, the author enjoys the copyright. However, if the copyright is not registered, it is difficult to prove who the original author is.

Common copyright infringement situations: Copyright infringement occurs when sellers steal pictures, copy the five-point description , and use copyrighted artworks of others without the copyright owner’s authorization (most common in cartoons and film and television images).

• Trademark Infringement:

Sellers may use a trademark to identify their goods or services and distinguish them from the goods and services of other brands, including words, symbols or designs, or a combination of these (such as a brand name or logo).

Common trademark infringement situations: using the other party's registered trademark listing without the official authorization of the product brand, which is reflected in the appearance of other people's trademarks or brand names in the text of the detail page, displaying other people's trademarks in the pictures of the detail page , or writing other people's trademarks in their own listing titles, five-element characteristics, product descriptions, Search Term keywords and other detailed information when releasing products ; causing buyers to confuse the source of goods or services. In addition, the copycat sale of counterfeit goods is also a trademark infringement.

• Patent Infringement:

Patents protect novel technologies and are a form of legal protection for inventions. There are three main types of patents: design patents, utility patents, and invention patents. Sellers with published patents can prohibit others from making, using, offering for sale, or importing the invention into other countries for a fixed number of years.

1. Design patent right: A new design that is aesthetically pleasing and suitable for industrial application made by the shape, pattern, color or combination of a product. Simply put, it looks similar. As long as more than 60% of the people who are familiar with it complain about infringement, they will be punished.

2. Utility patent right: refers to a new technical solution that is suitable for practical use for the shape, structure or combination of a product. It is sometimes called a small invention or a small patent and is more practical.

3. Invention patent right: If a product has an invention patent right, it cannot be produced and sold without permission, which means it is a counterfeit product.

Patent infringement is relatively difficult to identify because to determine whether a product has a patent, one must look up its patent holder, patent name or patent number, but this is not an easy task for sellers.

Therefore, in order to avoid patent infringement, sellers must try their best to obtain relevant product information through multiple channels during the product selection and release process. Consulting suppliers and asking experienced peer sellers for advice are all effective ways to identify whether there is patent infringement.

Common infringement situations: using other people’s patented technology, design, etc. without the permission of the patent owner.

First, you need to register your brand on Amazon, because sellers who have completed the Amazon brand registration will enjoy exclusive rights such as anti-infringement search tools and tools for reporting violations:

After completing Amazon brand registration, you will gain access to the [Report Violation] tool. When your product involves any of the above types of infringement, you can report it to Amazon in a timely manner.

Report a Violation is a tool provided by Amazon for reporting infringements . Project Zero leverages the combined strengths of Amazon and brands to enable brands to "tear apart" counterfeit goods through automatic protection, self-service removal, and product serialization.

Sellers can use the tool’s search and reporting features to authorize intellectual property owners and their agents to notify Amazon of suspected intellectual property infringements.

Find it: Log in to https://brandregistry.amazon.com Menu bar [Protection] > [Report Violations]

The first step for sellers to successfully report annoying infringing sellers using this tool is to correctly determine what type of infringement they are experiencing. Because the reporting process for different infringements is different, if you make the wrong choice at the beginning, your report may fail!

If you have achieved at least a 90% accuracy rate using the Report Violation tool in the past 6 months, your brand may be eligible for Project Zero! With Project Zero, you no longer need to contact Amazon to remove counterfeit products, but can remove counterfeit products yourself.

• Supplier issues

Many sellers will directly use product photos provided by cooperative suppliers to create listings, and the suppliers will usually swear that the photos were taken by the suppliers themselves;

However, as a seller, you are not clear about the specific facts, so problems will easily arise. You cannot use the supplier's set of pictures to save this part of the cost, because you don't know where these pictures really come from, and this may cause infringement of the picture copyright.

• Amazon’s intellectual property policy blind spot

Many sellers think that they are done after listing their products, and do not fully understand Amazon's intellectual property policy; because Amazon's seller backend has relevant intellectual property policies, which every seller needs to read carefully and understand, and take precautions against various possible clauses mentioned in the policy. In addition, as a qualified Amazon seller, you must not only understand Amazon's own platform policies, but also study the official intellectual property website of the site where the store is located, such as USPTO in the United States, UK IPO in the United Kingdom, and EUIPO in Europe, etc. At the same time, product reviews can also be assisted by searching these websites.

• Pay attention to self-examination when selecting products

Sellers should have a thorough understanding of the products they choose and can do basic intellectual property searches on the products before selecting them. However, it is worth noting that patent searches have a long blind search cycle, so searches cannot guarantee that the product does not infringe.

Case 1: Fila is the owner of the Zhaodanmao brand, which mainly provides Amazon off-site promotion services. One day, she found that store A was also selling off-site promotion services with the Zhaodanmao logo. The Zhaodanmao logo was also used on the product details page, and the title read "Zhaodanmao off-site promotion".

Fila believes that this behavior is an infringement and plans to report the seller using the Report a Violation tool. Which type of infringement described above does this belong to?

Answer: Store A is involved in trademark infringement. Store A cannot directly use the brand name and logo of Zhaodanmao in the title, pictures, and product details page to avoid consumers thinking that the off-site promotion service is a professional service of the Zhaodanmao brand.

Therefore , after Fila determined that this was a trademark infringement, he immediately opened the [Report Violation] tool interface , selected "Trademark Infringement", and then selected "Illegal use of my trademark on the product details page" to report it!

Case 2: Rich is the owner of the Kate Lynn brand, which mainly sells jewelry. One day he discovered that Store B was using a patented set of Phoenix jewelry images on its own pirated products, and even put the ad space at the front, madly taking advantage of the traffic of the popular main image.

Rich is very angry. He spent a lot of energy and money in applying for the trademark patent, and hired an external model to take the main picture, but it was stolen. What types of infringement can Rich report against this client this time?

Answer: Store B is involved in image infringement and patent infringement ; Store B cannot directly use unauthorized original images and cannot sell patented pirated products!

Therefore, after Rich determined that this was a trademark infringement, he immediately opened the [Report Violation] tool interface and selected "Trademark Infringement" to report!

Well, this is the end of Zhaodanmao’s most detailed sharing on how to deal with infringement, copycat sales, and complaints.

Finally, Zhaodanmao would like to emphasize again: If you accidentally choose a product that infringes on your rights, or if your product has been sold for a year or two, and then its invention patent takes effect, and then your product is taken off the shelves due to infringement complaints, you will find that you have infringed your rights.

When writing an appeal letter, you should systematically list the root cause of the violation, the measures taken to resolve the violation, and the measures taken to avoid future violations. The first and last two points are often very important parts of the appeal letter and are also the focus of the review, so be as detailed as possible. After writing the appeal letter, submit it in the background and pay attention to the emails and background performance notifications in time.

In addition, the most important thing is not to submit the appeal letter as soon as possible, but also to pay attention to the frequency of submission. After all, the number of backend appeals is limited. Instead, you should calm down and analyze the problem. Even if it is not passed the first time, there is no need to be nervous. Analyze where the problem lies so that the entire appeal letter is clear, well-reasoned, and logical.