What is brand infringement? Brand infringement assessment

Amazon is a platform that takes intellectual property very seriously and is committed to ensuring that products do not violate or infringe the intellectual property (IP) of copyright owners. Infringement on Amazon is a very serious violation. Once a complaint is made, the product will be removed from the shelves at the least, and the store may be forced to close at the worst.

The most common situation is brand (trademark) infringement complaints.

What is a trademark?

A trademark is a word, symbol, or design (such as a stylized brand name or logo) that a company uses to identify its goods or services and distinguish them from those of other companies. Generally, trademark law is intended to prevent buyers from being confused about the source of goods or services.

Trademark owners typically protect their trademarks by registering them with a country-specific trademark office, such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In some cases, a person or company may have rights in a mark simply by using the mark in commerce, even if the mark has never been registered with a country-specific trademark office. These rights are called "common law" trademark rights and can be more limited.

Example: Trademarks often appear on Amazon product detail pages in the form of the product and brand names listed on the product detail page. For example, the Amazon trademark "Anker" appears below the product name on the product detail page shown below.

How to file a complaint against someone else's copyright infringement?

• ASIN Level: If a product or product packaging on Amazon bears your trademark, but you do not manufacture the product, you can report the entire ASIN or the entire product detail page for trademark infringement.

• Seller Level: If you believe a seller has listed a specific product that infringes your trademark rights, you can report that product as infringing. However, if you are only reporting a single product, the corresponding product detail page and ASIN are expected to remain active. When you report a product instead of an entire ASIN, you are only mentioning that the product is infringing, not the entire ASIN or product detail page. Providing a test purchase with a valid order ID can help support your report.

• Product detail pages: If your trademark is used on a product detail page, but the product being sold is not yours, you can report the use of your trademark on that product detail page as infringing.

1. After selecting the content to report, please tell Amazon the specific reasons why you believe there is infringement (for example, the product detail page uses your trademark).

2. Identify the specific trademark that you believe has been infringed. If you believe your trademark is protected by common law and therefore does not have a registered trademark number, please provide the following information in your report:

• The date the mark was first used in commerce.

• Identification of the trademark when used in commerce, such as a link to an example on your website.

• Identification of the goods/services using the trademark.

Note: Providing a trademark registration number in your report does not automatically add the trademark to your registered brands. To add a new trademark, visit Amazon Brand Registry Support and click Add Another Trademark under the Update Your Brand Profile section in the left menu of the page.

3. (Recommended) Completing a test purchase and providing a valid order number will help support your report.

4. Provide accurate and valid contact information.

5. Submit your report on the [Report Violation] page in the Amazon backend.

How to prevent yourself from infringement?

1. Ensure the legitimacy of the supply channels. When selecting products, it is necessary to prevent possible product infringement issues from the supply chain.

Understand the production capacity and qualifications of the manufacturer/supplier to avoid imitations and fakes. If you find that a product has a trademark of another company, it is best to check it on the trademark website first. Once you find that the trademark is valid, but the trademark owner is not your supplier and the supplier cannot provide you with a letter of authorization, it is recommended not to sell the product.

2. When a seller acts as an agent and sells a brand’s products on Amazon, he or she needs to obtain formal authorization for the brand’s trademark before posting the listing.

It should be noted that only trademark holders are eligible to conduct brand authorization. Some agents are not qualified to authorize other sellers who open stores on Amazon. Only after obtaining formal authorization from trademark holders can sellers have the legal right to use trademarks.

3. When posting a listing, it is recommended to use original pictures and text descriptions. The title of the listing and the keywords in the search terms cannot contain other people’s brand names.

4. When setting the store name, you need to pay attention to whether the store name involves trademarks registered by others. You cannot copy other well-known brand names, nor can you use brand names that are easy to mislead buyers.

In addition, the brand detection function of the SellerSprite plug-in can help sellers determine whether their products are likely to infringe on the brand by automatically detecting whether there are Amazon brand terms in the listing title and five-point description, so as to avoid risks in advance and take precautions.

The brand words marked in red come from the brand names with brand flagship stores on Amazon that are included in the SellerSprite system.

Because new terms are constantly being registered, SellerSprite will continue to update the system's brand vocabulary. Sellers also need to regularly check the listing's images, keywords, titles, etc.

Regarding registered brand trademarks, Amazon’s official customer service responded that it is not recommended to use them in your own listings, including pictures, titles, five-point descriptions, long descriptions, Search Terms, etc.

If you use a noun from the brand's trademark and are complained by the trademark owner, Amazon may tell you that your product has caused brand infringement, that is, misusing someone else's trademark name.

However, some brand names contain common nouns or generic nouns for products, which cannot be avoided when editing the listing, such as all, when, yoga, etc. below:

If you receive such a complaint, you first need to ask Amazon to tell you the infringing trademark name and trademark number to further verify whether the trademark is valid and whether it has "exclusive rights" to the generic name of this trademark.

Secondly, make it clear whether you have used this common term as a trademark. After verifying these issues, you can determine whether there is infringement or not.

Of course, this kind of rights protection investigation process is more professional. The editor recommends that when receiving a complaint, you ask the other party to provide relevant brand patent information so that you can further verify it. After getting the information, it is best to find a professional intellectual property lawyer to conduct an investigation and seek a solution.

There is another situation where the complainant, when registering the trademark, specifies a protection item that does not include the product you sell, then such a complaint is also invalid.

The following links can be used to preliminarily query trademark registration details (click to jump):

US Trademark Search Website

European Trademark Search Website

Japanese Trademark Search Website