Amazon is preparing for a large-scale audit! Is branding the only way to have a future?

Recently, foreign media broke the news that Amazon is preparing an internal review to screen out the parts of the server that violate regulations and conduct centralized cleanup, including counterfeit and illegal infringements in the mall business!

This review is based on the internal review of Amazon's AWS business, and the mall business is also based on AWS. As a network service provider, AWS has a natural obligation to prevent illegal content from appearing in the services it provides. Therefore, Amazon said that it has recently expanded the AWS review team and plans to proactively delete more illegal content and listings before users or sellers report them.

For the mall business, this violation refers to some infringements and counterfeiting situations that Amazon can proactively discover. There is an infringement item in the performance panel of the seller's backend, which is used by Amazon to warn of suspected illegal products. This will be a warning that endangers the security of the entire account, and if Amazon confirms that the product is infringing, it may directly remove the product from the shelves.

From the perspective of unlicensed sellers, this is naturally a big crisis, but from the perspective of compliant branded sellers, this has no impact on them at all, and they can also take over the official hand to eliminate hidden copycat or infringing sellers, reducing competitive pressure. The branding route is still the general trend , and more and more people have seen this trend and have rushed to register various hot words for fear of falling behind.

According to incomplete statistics from China's State Administration for Market Regulation (formerly the State Administration for Industry and Commerce) as of 2020, nearly 15% of well-known trademarks in China's market have been preemptively registered overseas, with an average of more than 100 cases per year, involving multiple industries such as food, clothing, housing and transportation. Since the 1980s, there have been more than 2,000 cases of overseas preemptive registrations, directly or indirectly causing intangible asset losses of more than 1 billion yuan each year.

On August 31, 2017, the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce issued an overseas trademark preemptive registration warning on its official website. A foreign businessman applied to register a large number of Chinese toy companies' trademarks in the Chilean Industrial Property Office in his personal name. More than 120 toy companies were involved, and more than 130 trademarks were preemptively registered, half of which were from toy companies in Chenghai, Guangzhou.

Looking back to 2006, when the national brand Qia Qia was exploring the European market, it found that the English and graphic names of "Qia Qia" had already been registered by a German company. Later, Qia Qia wanted to purchase the overseas trademark of "Qia Qia", but the other company offered a sky-high price of 200,000 euros. Qia Qia could only file a lawsuit with the German court to cancel the trademark. After the first instance, the second instance, and the appeal, it took 7 years before the trademark was successfully cancelled.

Coincidentally, the dispute between Jordan, a subsidiary of Nike, and Jordan Sports in Jinjiang, China, started an eight-year-long tug-of-war, and until last year, only the graphic + Jordan word trademark was ruled to be revoked.

A deeper look into the reasons for the successful overseas trademark registration reveals that Chinese companies lack brand awareness.

Most companies will not consider applying for overseas trademarks before they start overseas business, but trademark squatters take advantage of the characteristics of trademark regional protection and the principle of "first to register" to register first. When the trademark owner reacts, whether he abandons the original trademark, buys it back at a high price, or protects his rights through legal means, it will greatly increase operating costs and delay the time for his products to occupy the market.

It is recommended that companies that are currently or will later intend to enter the cross-border international market or sellers that are preparing to expand in the cross-border industry should, while registering domestic trademarks, also take precautions against international trademarks and be the first to apply for trademarks in the countries where they intend to expand their business, so as to prevent others from registering their trademarks first.

If your trademark has already been registered, don't panic. You can choose appropriate tactics based on your own situation and needs to safeguard your legitimate rights and interests.

In short, once a trademark is preemptively registered overseas, it becomes a very difficult matter for the enterprise. Rather than facing various difficulties after being preemptively registered, it is better to monitor, prevent and respond promptly and accurately as early as possible to avoid losses to the enterprise.