Hi,
I received a red exclamation violation on my phone about trademark misuse from a listing that I haven’t used (and has zero sales) for about 8 years. I was doing retail arbitrage back then. See the screenshot below:
It only has “Appeal” option. I don’t want to appeal because I no longer have this product. Can I just delete the listing? Should I delete all old listings? So they don’t come back to cause problems later. Please advise. Thanks.
Don’t commit intellectual property violations?
You are responsible for every listing in your catalog, even if you never sold the item or the listing was never active. You should therefore cull your listings to remove all SKUs that you do not plan to sell, as well as any that may have been listed before you knew all the rules.
Regarding this violation, the damage has already been done. If you delete the SKU, the violation will remain on your account for ~180 days then fall off. If you do nothing, you will get repeat violations for this listing, doing increasing damage to your account. The only way to remove the metric damage is to appeal the decision (which does not imply a desire to continue to sell, you can still delete the SKU after the appeal), but you may not be able to appeal successfully.
The way it was explained to me by an American based Amazon rep.
You have to in some way address it.
You basically appeal with a Mea culpa saying we have deleted the offending listing and checked our inventory to insure compliance.
Yes. If you delete within 24hrs the violation will disappear. Under 48hrs I think it still will, but I’m not certain.
Yes, but they still can cause issues if you had sales on them.
Still it’s best to delete.
For an IP violation? That’s potential legal stuff, I was under the impression Amazon won’t remove the violation for anything less than a successful appeal or the violation expiring.
You have to actually REMOVE them totally which takes a few steps. Clicking on “Delete Listing” only hides it but does not actually do anything helpful for IP, etc.
Even totally removing things will NOT stop Amazon from biting any of us in the butt for things that happened 10 or 15 years ago,
Their motto is “NEVER FORGET and NEVER FORGIVE”.
HOW TO PERMANENTLY REMOVE A SKU
Delete SKUs Using Inventory Loader
You can use the Inventory Loader to delete SKUs from your inventory. Deleting SKUs is different from deleting offerings. Product detail pages are created based on input from many sellers. Using the Inventory Loader to delete SKUs will remove your contributions to the descriptive product attributes that are rendered on product detail pages. This enables you to manage the item data associated with specific SKUs.
Delete both your offers and item data contributions.
Enter an “x” in the add-delete field in your Inventory Loader file. This will completely remove all data associated with your SKU.
Deactivate your offers without deleting item data contributions.
Enter a “d” in the add-delete field in your Inventory Loader file. When you delete offers by entering a “d” in the add-delete field, it sets your inventory for the SKUs to “0”. This will make those listings show as inactive.
If you submitted a category-specific inventory file originally and want to use an Inventory Loader file to delete SKUs or make other changes to your listings, you can modify an Active Listings Report. See Use Reports to Update Inventory
Reuse of SKUs
• In general, we discourage reusing SKUs for different products. Each SKU should have a one-to-one relationship with a unique ASIN.
• Assign a new SKU to each new product being sold. This will maintain previous item data contributions that are associated with a specific SKU.
• If you do reuse a SKU, first delete the active ASIN data or you will receive an error message. To remove old associations before reusing a SKU, enter an “x” in your Inventory Loader file. This is important for sellers who routinely reuse SKUs to associate previous SKUs with new ASINs.
SIDE NOTE and personal opinion - I suspect it wouldn’t help anyway because I doubt the lawyers would ever allow complete removal of the information due to any potential legal liabilities at some time in the future –
For an SIPV, yes. They are often wrong anyway.
I believe you are correct. Back in the day when I was just a garage seller on Amazon, selling my used items, I sold brand items as used. It was allowed back then. When I stopped selling, I just left the store alone. I would get IP violation notice after notice after notice, but I was not selling and I was not planning to sell, so I just ignored them. Come time I decided to reopen shop as a professional, I came back and saw all these violations and old listings. I just deleted all and started fresh. I didn’t know about Amazon having a memory. I just deleted and Amazon seemingly forgot about it. My account was healthy after deletion, and it has been healthy ever since.
It’s been a few years. Things might have changed, but that was my experience.
Oh yeah? Not always…’
I do custom on a product I have, and have a listing on 250+ Boy/Girl names that I pulled from the Social Security top names 8 years ago
After 8 years - No issues. This year was IP’ed for the follow - and deleted
Bentley
Braxton
Cesar
Easton
Giovanni
Hudson
Jace
Marcus
Aubree
Avery
Hayden
Paige
and not a Girl/boy name
Navy (not the US Navy), but just Navy
Perhaps you missed the point. They are asking for help on IP that they DID violate.
Maybe you missed how you responded
What’s the best way to deal with “suspected intellectual property violation
“Don’t commit intellectual property violations?”
Yes, they then proceeded to explain that they had indeed violated IP, they just hadn’t done so in a long time. At that point, it’s no longer suspected, it’s confirmed.
Technically true BUT I’m going with “Retail Arbitrage” as a smoking gun with fingerprints and powder residue on the hands.
It doesn’t matter one way or the other.
The question, “Can I just delete the listing?”
The answer is - “Yes. On SIPV’s if you delete soon enough the violation goes away.”
SIPVs are the reason that the Collectibles and Fine Arts categories on Amazon have been decimated of sellers. There is no good way to deal with them, and sellers in those categories left rather than deal with the problem.
There were too many appeals, so Amazon chose to ignore all of them. My major contact with Amazon is receiving SIPVs on listings I created when I sold on Amazon.
I have never found any consistency in whether deletion leads to their disappearance, but I have not seen any further consequences either.
SIPVs have a deterrent effect. They deter some sellers from listing anything on Amazon.
Sorry for slow reply. I’m traveling oversea (hence everything is much less efficient). Thank you everyone for your reply especially @oneida_books for clarification and @dwat0870 for detailed steps to remove the zombie listings.
More info. This is not a violation. It’s just a “suspected” violation. I just found more info from the web version. It has way more info than the mobile version.
This product is not a collectable. It’s a home improvement product brand that almost nobody heard that name of. Amazon must have nothing to do to go through some no-name brands and search through Amazon listings 
Again, thank you everyone. I’ll delete all old listings as recommended.
more likely that a either the brand was added to brand registry and the owner complained or a rightsholder complained when it was not in brand registry. Or Amazon decided to sell the brand.
Yeah, it’s not important until it’s your brand and your products that someone else is messing with. That’s my point here.
I spent a lot of time, money to build my products and brands and I continue to spend a lot of time and money to defend them. You would probably consider my brand “no-name” and violate it without regard as well.
That is why I reacted the way I did and I really don’t care what responses I get for doing so. There is a right way to do business and a wrong way. Amazon is calling you out for disregarding the hard work and resources that another company put into their business and you blame Amazon for protecting the rights of that company?
I understand the “bots gone wild” issues that arise and folks helping out with that. As I’ve already alluded to, that is a different animal. What would you think if it’s your own “no-name” brand that someone else was abusing? Would you be OK with folks here helping them get out of the consequences of damaging your brand/business?
We’re all business owners here. I would hope that most of us try to color within the lines of how we conduct ourselves and our businesses.
Agreed, BUT Amazon interpretation of Trademark LAW is a huge issue for businesses that follow the Law
Obtaining a Trademark for a brand - must also be tied to certain category (there are 34 for products and 11 for services), of which most only apply and obtain for 1 or 2 as the cost is exorbitant for most.
Your “no-name” brand let say is Class 16 - Paper Goods. That gives you NO right to pursue another that is selling a T-Shirt - Class 25 (if you did not obtain), no matter how much time you spend “Building my [your} products”.
“That is why I reacted the way I did and I really don’t care what responses I get for doing so”
