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In 2023 , cross-border e-commerce sellers are undoubtedly facing higher compliance challenges.
In addition to a series of compliance requirements issued by various countries for cross-border e-commerce, the policies of major e-commerce platforms are also constantly changing, covering multiple aspects such as account compliance, intellectual property rights and product compliance. Compliance has become the first trend in operations. Recently, sellers on the Amazon platform are facing two major problems in terms of compliance: brand registration and account review. A large number of sellers’ brands have been removed by Amazon Under the general trend of compliance, as sellers' brand awareness gradually increases, Amazon's review of brand registration has become more stringent. It is learned that recently, a large number of sellers’ brands have been removed after being determined by Amazon as brand abuse . There are mainly three situations: 1. The old brand was revoked for no reason, but when re-applying for registration, it was prompted that it had been registered . Not only can the seller not use the brand, but also there is no way to re-register the brand; 2. After you file a complaint about hijacking through the brand tool, Amazon will remove the hijacked products and then the seller’s brand as well; 3. Some new brands were also judged to be brand abuse when applying for brand registration. ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan
In response to the above situation, a speculation has attracted the attention of many sellers in the cross-border circle: Amazon has recently blacklisted some lawyers. Any trademarks named by lawyers on the blacklist will be judged by Amazon as brand abuse. ▲ The picture comes from the seller communication group It is learned that Amazon's brand registration requires sellers to successfully register their trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) before they can apply for it. The USPTO requires applicants or registrants who reside in foreign countries to register trademarks on behalf of a US licensed attorney. Therefore, most sellers can only complete trademark registration through US lawyers. A senior seller analyzed that some lawyers who are listed as U.S. trademark attorneys may have tens of thousands of trademarks under their names. Once the lawyer is blacklisted by Amazon, all the trademarks represented by the lawyer will be at risk of problems. The trademark may be cancelled due to abuse, and the seller will not be able to re-register and put products on the shelves later, so the seller will need to change lawyers and file a new appeal. In early July of this year, a seller whose trademark was determined by Amazon to be brand abuse received the following response from Amazon: the lawyer who submitted the trademark registration was associated with a trademark that was invalidated for violating the terms and conditions of the USPTO. Therefore, in order to continue with the brand registration, the seller needs to apply for a new trademark from a lawyer who has no record of bad behavior in the past. Since most of the trademarks judged to be brand abused have been used normally for a period of time and no other abnormal conditions have occurred before, many sellers believe that the above sellers' speculation is likely to be the fact, and are therefore dissatisfied with Amazon's use of its own judgment criteria to define the scope of brand abuse. However, Amazon has not yet responded to the large number of brand abuses. Therefore, it is difficult for the sellers to determine the real reason why the brand was judged to be abused. They can only submit a complaint to Amazon or try to change the attorney to solve the problem. In addition to the brand registration issue, new developments have also emerged in the account verification problem that has previously troubled Amazon sellers. Some seller accounts were deactivated due to failure to pass the verification review
It is learned that since Amazon released the relevant announcement of the US "Consumer Notification Act" in May, Amazon sellers have been terrified about the "annual information verification" mentioned in the announcement. There was also a rumor in the cross-border circle that "once the bill takes effect, accounts that fail the review will be directly blocked." At that time, Amazon responded to the above rumors: there is no account suspension or fine for information verification, but the account will be suspended if it is not verified in time, and it will be restored once the verification is completed. Recently, many Amazon seller accounts have been deactivated due to failure to pass the information verification required by the Consumer Act. Amazon stated in the notification email that because the seller has not yet submitted the required information for verification or the submitted information cannot be verified , the seller’s Amazon seller account has been deactivated and the posted product information has been removed. From the email, it can be seen that accounts that have been deactivated due to incomplete information verification can be reactivated , rather than being "directly blocked" as previously rumored. At the same time, some sellers have reported that although transfers cannot be made when the account is deactivated, the funds in the account can still be withdrawn and will not be frozen like when the account is blocked, so sellers do not need to worry too much about this. However, in general, the deactivated account will still have a significant impact on the seller's sales. We would like to remind all sellers to submit relevant information as soon as possible to complete the information verification to avoid other situations from occurring later. In addition to the sellers whose accounts were deactivated due to failure to complete information verification, there are also sellers who stated that their accounts had previously passed the information review, but were recently deactivated by Amazon for not meeting consumer requirements, and there is no appeal entry. It is understood that since June, Amazon has encountered many system loopholes in processing accounts for verification because the scope of accounts required to be verified under the Consumer Act is very wide. Therefore, in response to the above situation, many sellers believe that there is a problem with Amazon's system processing again. Here we can only suggest that the relevant sellers wait patiently for the system to be updated and then pay attention to whether further operations are required. I wonder if any sellers have encountered similar situations?
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