I am really sorry if this topic was discussed previously. I saw a topic about rebranding but this appears to be different. Recently I noticed a couple of sellers creating new listings of renowned brand products showing the original brand of the product and a picture of their brand sticker beside the pack. How do they get away with this and how do they get Amazon to throw sellers off the listing.
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Welcome to SAS
Standard case of “not caught yet”.
I have not found a reliable way to report this sort of thing as a seller. When buyers complain Amazon pays more attention, but most listings like this stay up until they are caught in a bot sweep.
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If it’s not your brand, you can’t do anything about it since you have no right to.
The owner of the brand can get their listing removed for copyright/trademark infringement.
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So, theoretically, I can sell Nike shoes by listing them under my own brand with a sticker? Or any supplement if I know that rights owner doesn’t pay attention to this stuff? As I understand these guys have their own brand registered, correct? Seems to be a giant loophole
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I mean technically yeah, but Nike Legal is going to have a field day with you. Amazon doesn’t care as it’s not Amazon’s fight.
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Nike does do a lot of IP enforcement so you’ll get shut down pretty fast.
If you find a brand that doesn’t enforce their IP, then the answer is yes, you can have a field day.
It’s not a loophole, it’s always been the IP owner’s responsibility to monitor and enforce their IP. You can report infringement to the IP owner, and they will generally take action on it. If they don’t then that means they don’t care and deserve to have their brand ripped off. FWIW, I’ve notified IP owners about stuff in some circumstances, and I’d say around 3 out of 4 do care, 1 out of 4 doesn’t care if they’re getting ripped off.
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I guess for them it’s why kill another goose that is laying eggs?
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It’s not Amazon’s job to make the determination if something is infringing. For all they know they’re authorized to use the other brand’s brand name. Only the IP owner can make the determination that a given usage is infringing.
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This argument falls apart in light of the constant barrage of invoice and LOA documentation demands I get on a near daily basis.
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Those are brands who likely pushed Amazon to implement some kind of bot sweeping of their trademarks.
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I know for a fact that this is not the case. While this may be true for some brands I sell, there are at least a few where the brand does not care one bit who does what with their stuff on Amazon. The Amazon “requests” are not limited to the stricter brands.
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Well, I’ve seen some pretty egregious trademark infringement listings that have been up for a very long time and are still up to this day (I only report these issues to the rights owner if I have incentive to do so, but I do continue to monitor some of these). I guess I don’t see the ones that are automatically removed. I have no idea how the Amabots choose what to enforce and what not to enforce. But I see many many many blatant cases of infringement that are up for a long time.
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Trademark and copyright enforcement are the responsibility of the IP owner.
Amazon’s responsibility is to, when notified by the rights owner, to remove infringing listings when notified by the brand owner or risk losing its immunity from a rights infringement lawsuit.
Amazon may, when it chooses to remove any listing as a possible infringement. It can do this for ANY reason it chooses.
How it chooses to act is the usual trade secret, and probably to avoid the embarrassment of how half-arsed the process is.
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This statement is Maintak-certified TRUE.
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They get away with this until they are caught.
I reported one seller who was doing this and grabbed a few of our branded items and added their name. I not only reported our items but I filed a separate report for every other item that I noticed.
I did it two ways. In the listing, there will be a link that says “do you have a problem with this seller or item”. Click that and report it. Also open a case, using the ASIN, link the listing in the case. Mention that the brand , in this case Spring Valley, is not “owned” by the seller listing that item and therefore they cannot legally hijack that brand. It took a few days but they were all removed, even the listings that were not our trademarked brand.
Off topic, I saw the Ivermectin, gave me a good laugh…
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When it’s your brand this has a reasonable chance of success. When you are not the brand owner, it is much harder.
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Definitely. However what I reported WAS taken down, possibly because of our brand reports. Not sure why they made the decision to remove the listings but ours and the others the seller hijacked were all gone within a few days. Surprising for sure.
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there’s a good chance the other brand owner also reported them
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