Zero tolerance! Amazon's new policy severely cracks down on counterfeit and shoddy products! Sellers were accidentally injured and awarded 700,000 yuan in compensation?

As the world's largest e-commerce platform, Amazon has attracted a large number of sellers who come here to make money. Therefore, there is a lot of competition on Amazon, and this competition should be fair and orderly .

However, currently on the Amazon platform, many unscrupulous sellers use despicable means of unfair competition such as counterfeit brands, forged certificates, manufacturing and selling inferior products, and selling at low prices to seize the market, which has seriously disrupted Amazon's market order .

Under such circumstances, Amazon, as a platform, could no longer sit still and once again announced an investigation and crackdown on counterfeit and shoddy products .

Zero tolerance for counterfeit and shoddy products

Amazon issued an announcement stating that starting from March 19, 2021 , Amazon will add a policy to investigate illegal inventory in its relevant program policies.

The specific contents of the new policy are as follows:

Once a seller is suspected of selling counterfeit products or other illegal goods , Amazon has the right to request the seller to provide additional inventory information for non-Amazon FBA inventory . If the seller does not provide the requested information, or after investigation, it is found that the FBA inventory contains counterfeit or illegal products, Amazon will punish the suspected seller.

In the seller communication group, sellers expressed their opinions on Amazon’s new policy.

It seems that sellers are very disgusted with the act of selling counterfeit products. After all, these counterfeiters have no bottom line and even disregard Amazon's platform rules in order to make money .

However, this new policy may hurt many sellers. Why do we say that? Let's analyze this policy.

If Amazon suspects that a seller is engaged in the sale of counterfeit or other illegal goods, it will require the seller to provide additional inventory information that is not part of Amazon FBA inventory. Amazon's judgment criteria here are most likely based on copyright, trademark rights, invention patents, and design patents.

But this judgment standard is problematic. Take the recent case of a seller as an example.

This seller reported in the forum that one of his products, which had been selling steadily, had been complained by the same intellectual property agent pointerbp for two years, causing the listing to be removed from the shelves repeatedly. None of the seller's products were infringing, but they had the same functions as the other party , but they were still complained.

The starting point of this policy is good, but the criteria should be changed. It is unreasonable for the seller mentioned above to be judged as infringing just because the functions are the same. According to this logic, many categories of goods are in danger. For example, the basic functions of goods in categories such as clothing, shoes, and bags are very similar .

This lack of accurate evidence in determining infringements has caused Amazon to suffer recently.

The seller was wrongly blocked and received compensation of 700,000

According to foreign media reports, Amazon suspected a seller of selling counterfeit electronic products, so it suspended the seller's account and confiscated the inventory and account funds. The seller asked Amazon to return his funds and products, but was rejected by Amazon. The helpless merchant had to apply for arbitration in court.

During the process, mediator Brown concluded after reviewing contracts, interviewing witnesses and reading legal basis that "Amazon had good reason to doubt the merchant and had the right to suspend his account."

But Brown also pointed out that " Amazon has gone too far by kicking sellers off the platform and detaining their products that are not suspected of being counterfeit . Given Amazon's huge resources, I hope that in the future Amazon will invest the necessary resources to respect sellers and treat all sellers with due process."

The incident then ended with Amazon paying $700,000 in compensation to the seller who was mistakenly blocked.

From this incident, it is not difficult to see that Amazon's behavior is too radical. It suspends the seller's account, confiscates the seller's inventory and account funds simply because it suspects the seller of selling counterfeit products, and does not give the seller any room to explain.

One lawyer analyzed that "Amazon should introduce a third-party agency to jointly supervise the products on the platform with Amazon. Instead of controlling the life and death of sellers based on the opinions of one party alone, Amazon, as the world's largest e-commerce company, is currently too radical in judging infringement. As a platform, it should respect every seller and carefully verify every complaint about infringement."

In the sellers’ view, Amazon’s current judgment of infringement has loopholes . They hope that Amazon can improve the mechanism as soon as possible, accurately strike at sellers with problems, and stop hurting innocent sellers.

At the same time, Amazon is stepping up its crackdown on counterfeiting, infringement and other behaviors . As a seller, you should abide by the rules of the Amazon platform and not take chances and do things that cross the red line of the rules.

What do sellers think about Amazon's zero tolerance for counterfeit products and its $700,000 compensation to sellers? Feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts with us~