A large number of commonly used words have been registered as trademarks, and sellers can’t stand it anymore: Are we going to be able to survive?

The cross-border industry is in turmoil, infringement cases are emerging one after another, and from time to time, common words are registered as trademarks, and some words even seem outrageous.

In particular, some common product words in the industry, once they appear, will sweep a large area, and sellers will fall into traps if they are not careful. After all, who would have thought that the most common product common words would be applied for trademark registration, and the application was successful, causing sellers to fall into traps inexplicably.

Recently, another group of sellers have fallen into infringement traps due to common and hot words.

There is infringement of common words

The seller's listing was removed from the shelves

Recently, an Amazon seller posted that he suddenly received a performance notification showing that more than a dozen of his listings had been removed, and the number was still increasing. The reason for the link being disabled was the abuse of the trademark " Summer ".

It is understood that the seller is a seller of summer products. The word "Summer" has a very wide range of applications for him. If many links had not been removed this time, he would not have known that the commonly used word "Summer" had been registered as a trademark.

After consulting customer service, the other party also made it clear that it was because of the word "Summer", and that any details containing the word "Summer" were considered infringement, such as summer clothes.

"Summer" is obviously a common word, and it is often used in sellers' links. Therefore, many people have encountered similar situations as the seller mentioned above, and it can be said that a large number of people have fallen. Many sellers have reported that they have also received the same emails or performance warnings, and their links have also been removed.

Currently, sellers on the four sites of the UK, the US, Japan, and Canada have claimed that their links have been removed, especially on the US site, where many sellers have had their links removed because of the infringement of this word. According to inquiries at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), there are many "Summer" trademarks in existence.

However, not all sellers whose links contain the word "Summer" are affected. A swimsuit seller said that he has a link that also uses this word, but the link is still intact.

Some people speculate that the impact may be related to the category registered by "Summer". However, there are still sellers who have reported that their links have also been removed, and it is possible that more categories will be affected.

However, no matter what the reason is, it is most important for sellers to quickly restore sales. Some sellers said that after deleting the infringing words, the performance can be cleared and the link will be restored quickly.

Although deletion is direct and effective, "Summer" is a common word and there are so many of them that it takes a lot of time for sellers to delete them. It is also very troublesome when "Summer" is used as a link word.

Common words are frequently registered as trademarks

Seller: "Are you going to let me live?"

In fact, it’s not uncommon for common words like “Summer” to be registered as trademarks, and many of these words are unexpected by sellers.

Today, Kuaiguozhi.com has compiled some words that have been recently involved in infringement, many of which are commonly used words in writing listings. Sellers should carefully check themselves to avoid being "backstabbed" by infringement of common words.

1. Durable

Recently, many sellers received alerts of suspected intellectual property infringement, indicating that the product keyword "Durable" was suspected of trademark infringement. Only then did they realize that the product keyword "Durable" had been registered by someone else.

By searching the USPTO official website, we found that the word "Durable" has been registered as a trademark by others in many overseas countries, such as Germany, Canada and the United States .

2. XM-L

Cross-border Knowledge has noticed that Cree LED, a major trademark company in the United States, has filed infringement lawsuits against more than 60 of its trademarks. Among them, several of the trademarks recently filed have been considered common word trademarks, especially the "XM-L" trademark, with case numbers 24-cv-20081 and 24-cv60062. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida has accepted the case and issued a preliminary injunction.

Many sellers use the trademark "XM-L" to indicate the size or model of their products. There are tens of thousands of listings related to "XM-L" on Amazon's US site alone , covering multiple product categories such as lamps, audio-visual equipment, 3C products, etc. Some sellers may not realize that they are facing infringement risks.

"XM-L" was registered as a trademark by Cree LED, an American company, as early as 2017. Kuaguiying learned that a seller was previously sued for infringement and was charged millions of dollars. This also provides a precedent for new lawsuits this year. Sellers should check in advance and avoid using titles, listings or product packaging in categories 9 and 11.

In recent years, Cree LED has filed for trademark protection almost every year. Despite such frequent trademark protection, there are still many sellers who are lucky enough to take risks. Sellers must be cautious when listing their products.

3. PINK

The official website of the U.S. court shows that Ceremony of Roses Acquisition LLC commissioned M. Lawrence Oliverio, Esq. to file a lawsuit for "PINK" trademark infringement, with the case number being 23-cv-11661 .

According to information on the USPTO official website, PINK was registered as a word trademark as early as 2001 and is still valid.

"Two of my stores died because of 'PINK'." A seller posted on a social platform that he had a product with the color word PINK in the listing. "This was the best-selling one among all the new products. I wanted to continue to work hard, but I didn't expect it to fail."

A group of sellers involved in the case also gathered under the seller's post, saying that the word "PINK" infringed their copyright. "If color words can be registered as trademarks, if all color words are registered, will people be able to survive?"

Final words

It is worth mentioning that some industry insiders pointed out that even if a commonly used word is successfully registered, the scope of protection is very small and the trademark registrant has no right to prohibit others from legitimately using the name.

However, although the copyright scope of these words is limited, sellers must be careful to verify when using them to ensure that the categories sold are not within the scope of their copyright.