Amazon's big loophole: Top 100 sellers are attacked indiscriminately, links are taken off the shelves, and they are followed in the middle of the night

2022-11-21
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Author:Blue Ocean Yiguan
Source: egainnews

The "cancer means" of vicious competition among Amazon sellers has attracted great attention again.
A 3C seller fed back to the domain news of Blue Ocean Yiguan. com that a group of top 100 sellers in American stations had been intensively "sniped" by unknown people recently.
An unidentified institution, using the personal identity of non Chinese nationalitybritainRegistered more than 40 brand trademarks, including 28 and AmazonUSA StationBestSeller brand is the same trademark, which covers household, pet, toy, essential oil, mosquito killer, etc.
Then, the attacker complained to Amazon against these BestSeller brand sellers, claiming that the brand belongs to the attacker and that these sellers are selling fake goods.
Later, Amazon will first remove the product links of these brands, and at the same time, the system will transfer the management right of the seller's trademark to the other party.
In this way, it has led to an absurd situation: he "infringed" his own brand.
To sum up, its means is to complain about the sellers who have already owned the "American trademark" by means of the "British trademark" registered by rush.
Amazon's big loophole in the cross-border e-commerce platform: Top 100 sellers are attacked indiscriminately, their links are taken off the shelves, and they are followed at midnight
for instance.
The brand of a BestSeller seller in the US station is ABC. The attacker registered a trademark of the same category in the UK.
At the same time, the attacker specially set up an independent brand station and copied it to his own independent station exactly by referring to the product pictures and copy in the seller's ABC brand store.
In this way, the attacker "owns" the rights of the brand in name.
Later, the attacker tested the seller's products, obtained relevant sales evidence, and then used the domain name email of its registered brand, such as the ABC brand above info@abc.com , filed a complaint with Amazon, claiming that these top sellers were not authorized to sell infringing products.
Later, Amazon not only removed the listing of the victim seller without detailed review,And untie the brand,And the control is transferred to the attacker.
However, the real owner of the brand will receive an email from Amazon: If you want to continue selling the brand product, you need to provide a publication, otherwise the brand product will automatically go off the shelf and affect the security of your account.
At present, many aggrieved sellers have submitted complaints to Amazon, providing exact evidence of trademark use and relevant materials,However, it is still judged by Amazon as a non trademark holder.
If the victim seller cannot appeal back, the attacker will have all the rights of the brand.
According to the reporter's feedback, this incident may beTop 100 sellers of each category in the US stationOnce ofNon discriminatory attacks.The purpose is not to blackmail the sellers, but to pull down the Top 100 sellers through such attacks, and then seize the vacant pit, as well as the brand control right of the American station of these victimized sellers.
The specific practices include but are not limited to selling these brand links through the small size in the middle of the night, using the FBA method.

Amazon's big loophole in the cross-border e-commerce platform: Top 100 sellers are attacked indiscriminately, their links are taken off the shelves, and they are followed at midnight

At present, it is the peak season. Many attacked sellers are unable to quickly appeal back to the link, and even face the danger of closing the store,They were even asked to ask for authorization from the organization that attacked them.
The victim seller believes that this is a big flaw in Amazon's processing mechanism. stayWithout detailed verification, the seller was removed from the shelf and suspended the sales authority in advance, which caused unnecessary losses to the seller; At the same time, the trademark review mechanism is not perfect, allowing these criminals to take advantage of it.
Therefore, the aggrieved sellers hope to unite and, when there is no hope of appealing to Amazon, hope to let Amazon recover the seller's sales authority through media exposure channels, and repair management loopholes to prevent more people from being attacked.
01

Lawyer said: although there is room for rights protection, the process is too long, or cause huge losses

In response to this situation, the Blue Ocean Yiguan website domain news consulted the legal profession.
In countries and regions dominated by the maritime law system such as the United StatesUse the first principle.The former user is the trademark holder, and the later user is not the ultimate trademark holder even if he/she has registered the trademark in advance.
Therefore, in the matter of "rush to register trademarks", the seller theoretically has a certain space for rights protection.
But in this case, different lawyers give different opinions.
According to lawyer Yang of Daxin Legal,If the seller also has a sales record in the UK,In theory, the aggrieved seller can submit evidence of the use time of his trademark and relevant use materials to the British Trademark Office, and then request the Trademark Office to withdraw the trademark application of the injuring agency.
However, the problem is that the process is long after this operation, and the losses suffered by sellers are already incalculable, "the day lily is cold".

However, it is almost impossible to reject the trademark for transnational application. Therefore, Lawyer Yang believes that there is no better way except compromise.

At present, Lawyer Yang is also studying whether there are ways to help the seller solve the problem.
Another lawyer who has in-depth research on the American legal system believes that the "first use principle" of trademark registration applies to the same country.
For example, I have registered an ABC trademark in the United States and used it for many years, which does not prevent a British person from registering an ABC trademark in the United Kingdom.
Therefore, theoretically, the rejection of trademark registration may not work.
However, if the seller holds a legal and valid American trademark, it is easy to do this,Direct to Amazon for arbitration, submit the evidence related to the trademark to Amazon's lawyer team, and ask Amazon to recover the seller's link and trademark control.
If the seller has lost due to Amazon's operation, they can claim together and ask the platform to make appropriate compensation. Of course, the probability of compensation being passed remains to be discussed.
If this method is effective, for sellers, there will also be a means to prevent others from rushing to register trademarks to "counter attack the stronghold" in the future.
For the victim sellers, this is indeed a method worth trying.
02

The seller was blackmailed for nearly 100000 yuan because of the trademark, but Amazon regarded it as a "legitimate transaction"

In fact, because of the imperfect brand and trademark management system, Amazon sellers have encountered many similar incidents of "rush to register trademarks".
In late October, there was feedback from the seller that the seller was blackmailed by the squatter because the trademark was squattedUS $15000 (about RMB95700 yuan)。
The seller has a store in the United States. Because of the low success rate of trademark registration in the past few years, he did not file on Amazon. In the past two or three years, because the sales volume of the store has been booming, the team has been busy making money and ignored the hidden trouble of this problem.
When the seller planned to open up the European market, he found that the trademark had been registered and successfully filed on Amazon. The seller has also changed from a brand holder to a "user".
What is more unacceptable to the seller is that by using the registered trademark, the squatter not only snatched the trademark control right of the European website, but also modified the seller's link to the American website. The modified product listing image left a naked QQ contact information.
When the seller contacts the other party through QQ, the other party offers two price codes:
The first option is to directly pay 15000 dollars to buy out the trademark;
The second option is to pay a monthly trademark use fee of 1500 dollars.
If the other party is required not to file a new brand and post a new link (anti association) in the store holding the brand, an additional fee of 3000 dollars will be paid.
The seller asked Amazon customer service about this, but the customer service answered,This is a communication and negotiation between the brand owner and the brand user, and Amazon has no right to interfere.
In this regard, the seller could only swallow the bullet and negotiate with the other party for a solution, which would probably compromise.
Another recent incident was similar to the experience of the seller mentioned above.
A seller submitted an application for trademark registration two years ago, but it was rejected because it was similar to an existing trademark.The seller believed that since his application could not be passed, others' applications could not be passed.Therefore, the seller assured the link and trademark to "run naked" for two years without official endorsement.
However, in September this year, after the seller found that the trademark was snapped up by others, he grabbed the right to edit the link. After modifying the picture, he made a Test Buy, and then complained that the seller did not sell the product correctly, leading to the suspension of the link.
At present, this link has accumulatedMore than 1000 reviews, scoring up to 4.4 points.
After being stopped, the seller suffered heavy losses, but could do nothing.
The above two sellers failed to register their trademarks due to objective reasons and decided to use them. In the end, they had problems and could only complain that they were too ambitious.
But if the method mentioned by the middle door lawyer above is feasibleThere is still hope for these two sellers to solve the problem.
The trademarks of both sellers have been snapped up recently, which indicates that the difficulty of trademark review may be reduced in the near future, but they have been snapped up by competitors, and finally the seller has become the target.
Based on the "first use principle" of European and American legal systems, sellers can collect sufficient proof of use through Amazon sales data. Then apply to the local trademark office to reject the other party's trademark and register as the trademark holder.
Then, through the trademark applied for, he filed an arbitration with Amazon to recover the link.
Of course, these two sellers may not be able to wait for the trademark application. After all, the trademark application process is complex and the review time is long,For sellers, one more day of delay means one more day of loss.
Finally, the seller should be reminded that the lifeline link and the main brand must always pay attention to registering the trademark at the first time. Even if the trademark cannot be registered temporarily, it should not be relaxed. It should continue to pay attention and try, so that when the audit standard is broadened or the auditor is changed, it can take down its own trademark and avoid being "blackmailed" by others.
03

The trademark has increased 15 times in 6 years, and Chinese people have applied for American patents

Of course, it is not the "patent" of Chinese sellers to rush to register others' trademarks.
In the middle of November 2020Rush to register more than 60 trademarksIt has attracted much attention, and many of the victims are even Amazon women's clothing big sellers.
The cause of the incident was that a seller accidentally found that his brand, which had been used for many years in the US station, was snapped up by others in the Canadian station as early as September after opening the Canadian station.
The seller either chooses to buy out the brand trademark at a high price, or can only apply for authorization, or simply abandon the brand.
However, when digging deeply into the information of the squatter, the seller unexpectedly found that the company had squatted more than 60 trademarks, among which Amazon women's wear sellers were also victims.
Obviously, the company's large-scale rush to register trademarks was premeditated. Taking advantage of the fact that the Canadian station was opened soon, the North American station was still dominated by the American station, and the number of Canadian stations was small, the company was the first to register trademarks for evaluation.
Similar events occurred in Japan in 2019.
WES Co., Ltd. used the urgent application to rush to register more than 30 high-quality trademarks of Chinese cross-border e-commerce sellers in the United States in Japan, and then had to buy trademarks at a high price while waiting for these sellers to open up the Japanese market.
The occurrence of a large number of similar events has also stimulated some people with evil intentions, forming an industrial chain with the rush to register trademarks. These people are called professional rush to register trademarks.
According to the feedback of insiders, the original self registrationTM trademark is no more than 3000 yuan,In the hands of these professional squatters, the price can be marked40000 to 50000,Some people are crazy and even shout280000 yuanThe high price of.
In recent years, the number of Chinese applying for trademarks in the United States has risen sharply under the stimulus of intention or unintentional.

Amazon.com's big loophole: Top 100 sellers are attacked indiscriminately, links are taken off the shelf, and they are followed in the middle of the night

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