Amazon Account Suspended due to potential IP violation, Amazon is not accepting our letter of Authorisation

Account Health Intellectual Property
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ello - folks,

Amazon Deactivated my Amazon Account due to a potential IP violation, when we have a letter of authorization from the said brand, Gildan, and have been working very closely with the said brand for years now. Amazon initially gave us no warning and just suspended our account with no clarity on what we did wrong, which part of our listing broke the IP as we are an authorized reseller on Amazon.

Our account was suspended on April 11, with the reason cited as a violation of Amazon’s Intellectual Property Policy. The notification indicated “Potential Intellectual Property Misuse (GILDAN)” for each of our listings.

We have submitted more than 7 appeals and Amazon has rejected all of our official legal documents. And has given us no clear indication of what they actually want from our side. We have provided them with invoices, letter of authorization, pay order statements to the supplier, and more. Any help in this regard is appreciated.

Thanks!

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Hi @Ali and welcome to SellersAskSellers! I’m sorry that you found us in these circumstances. For best help, I moved your post to the Intellectual Property category.

To help SAS help you, please copy>paste here the following, after redacting any confidential information and personal contact details:

  1. The original violation notice from Amazon
  2. Your most recent appeal and a list of documents that you submitted
  3. The most response from Amazon to your most recent appeal

Unfortunately, we can’t promise that we can get your account reactivated, but the SAS community can certainly take a look and see if we can help.

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Thank you @papy! I appreciate your help in this matter. Our information is as follows;

  1. The original violation notice from Amazon
  1. Your most recent appeal and a list of documents that you submitted

We have 7 appeals before this with proper POA. It is as follows;

  1. The most recent response from Amazon to your most recent appeal

Amazon has responded back with “We do not have enough information to Re-Instate your at this time”

Their seller support has told us that Amazon’s internal team has decided to not reinstate our account and will not provide us with any further information.

[mod edit: formatting]

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Hello Ali! With Amazon too much is a bad thing, I would appeal with only the LOA. Does the LOA have all of the necessary information as well? If its a PDF you could print it out and scan it also.

Acceptable documentation (physical/digital) should have all of the below components:

Letter Head from the Company holding rights to the Protected Brand.
Body of the LOA having all of the essential terms as outlined above.
Note: If you do not have a trademark registration for your own brand in the region, where the products are being sold, you must also provide a declaration of brand ownership for the brand. Include the declaration for the brand ownership, under which you will be selling, along with your company stamp or signature from authorized personnel.
Signatories:
    Authorized signatory from the Licensor Company.
    Signature/Digital Signature or Stamping or Seal for franking of the document.

An acceptable email should have all of the below components:

Sender's email with a valid domain of the Company holding rights to the Protected Brand.
Body of the LOA having all of the essential terms as outlined above.
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Couple of questions.

Is the Gildan you’re working with the same Gildan that shows up on numerous Amazon.com listed listings when you search for Gildan?

^ This brand

You’re saying something about a print on demand company, this looks like a regular clothing company.

Did any of the violation notices specify a trademark registration number? When you search for that number in TESS does it come up with the same company information as the one that’s authorizing you?

If your Gildan is not the same as the Gildan brand that I linked, you might have an unresolvable problem.

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Does your LOA have the requirements to be considered valid by Amazon?

Does it have a logo on its letterhead?

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@Ali, a few questions…

  1. How did you verify to Amazon that your authentic and permitted Gildan merchandise is what the Buyer received?
  2. Do you have permission from Gildan to sell their products on Amazon?
  3. Have you contacted Gildan for help?
  4. What are the designs you’re using on Printful?
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Wait, did I misunderstand?

You are selling Gilden products through a print on demand company? I am assuming that they are printing on blank t-shirts and other such items from Gilden?

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Printful does actually offer gildan shirts to print on interestingly

https://www.printful.com/custom/brands/gildan

If OP was doing the same thing on Amazon, but wasn’t authorized to use Gildan’s trademark then that would be a problem.

@Ali Can you post some examples of listings you created that involved using Gildan’s name? If you actually infringed on their trademark you’ll have to use a completely different approach to a POA, and there most likely will not be a path to reinstatement as this is a big brand that Amazon retail carries themselves.

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Assuming that you have permission from the IP owner to sell their items on Amazon, and that you are not violating any IP policies:

The letter of authorization is only useful when appealing a violation. It won’t help you when appealing an account suspension. First you should get your account reinstated with your POA, then submit the LOA to Amazon before trying to list any items from this brand.

Since your account is suspended, you need to focus on your POA which has specific aspects.

  1. What we did wrong.
    A) We sold items we did not have authorization to sell. (Yes, I know you did have authorization, but Amazon did not have proof of authorization so as far as they are concerned, you did not have authorization. This process is less about proving you were right so much as checking the boxes required to get your account back.)

  2. How we resolved the problem.
    A) We deleted all items that were listed without proper authorization. (Removing the flagged items is not always enough. You have to tell Amazon that you understand the rules and took actions to follow them, not just delete the items you got caught. The point isn’t that you deleted more items than just the flagged ones, but rather you telling them you understand the rules around listing items and not that you just take stuff down when Amazon makes you. It’s a subtle difference, but it helps sometimes.)

  3. How you will prevent this problem going forward.
    A) We have reviewed all Amazon policies around what products may be listed and sold on Amazon, and we have ensured that all our employees are aware of all policies regarding the listing of items.
    B) We have reviewed all of our listings to ensure that they follow all rules and policies around intellectual property restrictions and instituted policies to ensure that all future items listed are authorized and permitted.

You can rewrite this to suit your specific needs, but this is the basic outline of a successful POA.

Submitting more or different documents than is asked does not help and can actually cause an otherwise successful POA or appeal to be rejected. I suggest removing all documents not specifically requested by Amazon. The same goes for information added to the POA. When dealing with Amazon, a good rule of thumb is to give them what they ask, exactly what they ask, only what they ask, and nothing else.

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@Tandi Yes, it does. It is a legal document with an e-signature, letter head, and everything.

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If it is a PDF I would again suggest printing and then scanning and submitting that only.

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@GGX It is the same Gildan company. Our supplier sources some of the blanks for our products from Gildan. Also, our violation did not list any trademark registration number. I have just omitted the flagged ASINs, the rest of the letter is as is.

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@Tandi Thank you for your suggestions. I will submit a simpler appeal following your guidelines.

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The LOA is from Gildan the clothing company correct?

Your supplier cannot authorize you to use Gildan, only the owner of the trademark can. The one listed here:

image
image1375×757 48.2 KB

I want to make sure that the company that issued you the letter is the same company as here. That is a requirement for it to be valid.

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@papy Yes sure;

  1. We provided them with a purchase invoice from our supplier with the flagged ASIN listed there. They are not that detailed, but they list dates, and the specific Gildan blank used.

  2. Yes we do, though by extension, through our supplier. We have consulted multiple Amazon agents on call and they have confirmed that we have authorization by extension, through our supplier, as per our submitted documents.

  3. We have not actually. We have been in contact with our supplier, and their legal team to address this.

  4. We have our original designs, which are copyrighted by us. Amazon has no problem with our designs though.

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This is sufficient to prove authenticity. This is not sufficient to prove brand authorized use of IP.

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You need to get a letter directly from Gildan authorizing the use of their trademark.

Amazon does not accept “by extension.” It needs to be from brand owner to you, and the letter needs to be backdated to before the violation occurred.

Also, you can forget about anything an Amazon seller support agent told you when it comes to policy compliance. They don’t know anything and you wouldn’t be the first seller they fed bad information to.

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@GGX We are not using the word “Gildan” or have anything linking us to them in our listing. We are just using their blanks with supplier authorization. Yes, I have just confirmed the letter of authorization that our supplier gave us. That is the Gildan we are talking about.

So we need Gildan to give us a direct letter of authorization, and just to confirm; does an authorization by extension not work in this case?

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@GGX Thank you so much for your guidance. I will be contacting Gildan directly after this. I, honestly, did not know this. Our supplier was pretty adamant that they could authorize us.

I believe we can get Gildan to authorize us directly, but I don’t think we will be able to backdate that letter before this IP violation was put on us.

1 Like