Breaking news! Several billion-dollar sellers are under investigation by the United States under Section 337, and their products may be banned by Amazon

In the past two years, the growth of auto parts products in the domestic cross-border e-commerce industry has been very rapid. Many emerging Amazon sellers have been targeted by some big brands that have been operating in the European and American markets for many years.

In the past, the infringement complaint methods we knew about were generally to initiate a complaint on the platform, and at most the law firm would file a lawsuit in court. However, a more advanced method is the US 337 investigation .

Section 337 investigation refers to the practice of the U.S. International Trade Commission ( ITC ) investigating unfair trade practices in the U.S. export process and taking sanctions in accordance with Section 337 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930 (hereinafter referred to as Section 337 ). Regarding the scope of application of Section 337 , most of them involve infringement of intellectual property rights.

Recently, The NOCO Company, a major American jump-starter brand, filed an application with the U.S. International Trade Commission pursuant to Section 337 of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930 , advocating an investigation application against a number of companies targeting specific portable battery jump-starter products and their components.

In the list published on the website of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the majority of companies investigated by The NOCO Company are Chinese companies . Among them are several top sellers in the cross-border e-commerce circle, such as Anker .

The NOCO Company was founded in 1914. It is a long-established American technology company that mainly produces and sells battery chargers, jump starters, solar panels, portable power devices, and a series of other consumer battery products and accessories. NOCO 's sales channels cover its own website, Amazon and other e-commerce website platforms, and are sold to the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and other regions.

Noco is very keen on using legal weapons and has sued many Chinese sellers in the past.

In January 2020, NOCO filed a lawsuit in the Cleveland federal court, suing 11 companies, most of which were from China, including a well-known Shenzhen seller , and two companies located in California and Colorado.

NOCO's lawsuit mentioned that these companies sold low-quality NOCO products and took advantage of the Amazon platform system to increase NOCO 's advertising costs by posting false negative reviews and ratings and using overseas click farms ( hiring people to click on ads ) , which seriously affected NOCO 's business on Amazon and caused the company to suffer heavy losses.

NOCO also sued another first-tier Amazon seller for patent infringement on four models of power supply products. The seller entrusted an agent lawyer to negotiate and eventually reached a settlement intention with a settlement fee of about US$ 108,000 .

Now, NOCO has launched a larger investigation application, pointing to more Chinese companies, believing that they have infringed its patent rights.

In fact, from 2010 to 2019, the ITC launched a total of 491 " 337 investigations", of which 169 involved Chinese companies.

In 2019 alone, the ITC launched 47 " 337 investigations", of which Chinese companies were involved in 27 cases, accounting for 57.45% of all investigations that year. Moreover, among these 47 investigations, 41 cases ( 87.23% ) were filed for patent infringement.

For e-commerce sellers, this is no longer the cross-border e-commerce of a few years ago. If they want to operate in the international market for a long time, it is essential to increase investment in intellectual property rights.

(Source: FBA Information)