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At the beginning of the new year, while looking back on the gains and losses of 2022, cross-border people have also set a sales blueprint for 2023. However, compared with the previous sales ambitions of tens of millions, this year the vision of many cross-border sellers seems to have become more Buddhist: The store is not closed! The freight forwarder won’t run away! The trademark is not exposed! No cost increase! Order volume is picking up! Good health!
Looking ahead to 2023, although it is still full of unknowns whether inflation can be eased and freight rates can be reduced, there is no doubt that cross-border e-commerce is still a vibrant industry. After entering a new stage of brand expansion overseas, cross-border sellers want to gain a foothold in this market where challenges and opportunities coexist. In addition to focusing on brand building, they should also pay more attention to trademark issues such as keyword infringement. Recently, we learned that a seller was found to have abused the trademark by using the generic word "one". The generic word "one" is trademarked? The seller's link is a bot!
It is learned that recently, some sellers reported that they received Amazon's performance notification email early in the morning, with more than ten links and the number is still increasing. Amazon said in the email that the product used trademarked terms on its detail page, which violated Amazon's seller intellectual property policy. ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan
After the seller opened a case and asked customer service, he learned that the link was judged to be a trademark infringement because the word "one" was used on the details page. Coincidentally, after the post was published, many sellers also said that they were judged to have infringed their products for the same reason: "In Japan, I received a ruling for trademark abuse (ONE) and I don't understand this!" "I got it too! It's outrageous that this thing is infringing copyright." "Me too. I received an email around 5pm yesterday. I opened the performance panel and saw three infringements. They were all trademark abuses, which means ONE was infringed. I don't know if Amazon has a bug again." So far, sellers on the US, UK, Canada, and Japan sites have been found guilty of trademark abuse for using the word “one”. Some sellers also discovered that "one" had already been registered as a trademark in Japan, but for some unknown reason the infringement issue suddenly broke out recently. ▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan It is worth noting that the sellers who are currently judged to be infringing due to the use of "one" are mostly in the industrial category . According to feedback from sellers in other categories, their products also use the common word "one", but they have not received performance notification emails, and there are no abnormalities in the links. Therefore, sellers in other categories of related sites do not need to worry too much for the time being. However, it is learned that this is not the first time that seller links have been affected due to generic words being trademarked. Common words are frequently registered, and sellers change descriptions to avoid risks!
In September 2022, a message that "the commonly used industry keyword '100%' has been successfully registered as a trademark, and using it on product pages may cause infringement" swept the cross-border circle. ▲ The picture comes from the seller communication group After verification, it was found that the 100% trademark had been registered as a trademark in multiple categories such as clothing and auto parts. For this reason, many sellers chose to change keywords to avoid risks, such as using 1+two capital letters O to form 1OO% instead of 100%. In response to the infringement of the generic word "one", some sellers have proposed a similar solution: changing the keyword "one" to 1. And according to feedback from sellers who have personally used this solution: after the keyword was changed, the link has been restored and the performance has been deleted. In general, the keyword infringement determined by Amazon this time did not have a significant impact on the seller's account after the words were modified, but many sellers believe that the act of registering common generic words as trademarks is simply "unreasonable." As mentioned in previous articles, according to Section 33b of the Lanham Act, some professionals have analyzed that even if a generic word is successfully registered, the scope of protection is very small. The Trademark Office will require the holder to give up most of the rights and cannot prohibit others from legitimately using the name. Based on this, it is not easy to constitute infringement from a legal perspective to use common words to reasonably describe products. However, since Amazon often adopts the approach of "first remove from shelves, then investigate" when it comes to infringement issues, we would like to remind relevant sellers to pay attention to relevant changes in a timely manner to avoid affecting product sales due to similar issues. What do you think of this? Welcome to discuss in the comments section~ |
