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Seller Threatining me with copyright
 

A seller has been selling an item on amazon solely for a while.

I received a message yesterday threading me to close all listings as they claim to own iP rights to this item.

The item is a generic electrical good made in china and is sold by many on ebay but soley him on amazon.

Today i get a message from amazon saying my listing for a different similar item has been removed because i have infringed the IP rights of this seller.

What should i do?

Report to amazon for the threat?

How can i tell them this item is generic and there is no IP owner?

btw this person sticks a sticker of their company logo on the item and uploads it on amazon as if its their product:doh:

Id say technically hes wrong and right , since your adding under his product listing he made your kind of infringing on the time and feedbacks it took to get his product ranking high enough to make good sales , especially since he brands it with his own logo then technically your not selling what he is even if hes just selling the same exact thing with a slapped on logo . i would just create your own product listing with the exact specifications and either leave it generic or make your own logo for yours as well.

Sounds like a smart Marketing guy.

You've been outfoxed.

Amazon takes steps to verify that a person who claims to be an IP owner actually is the owner. So if your similar listing was removed because of this seller, he most likely is the actual IP owner.

He may own something as shallow as the design patent to the item in your country ruling out you selling a product that looks the same. He may own the trademark to the name of what you are calling the item. Or he may hold all the cards and have something as iron clad as an international utility patent.

Just because there are generics of the item being made out China does not mean they have the right to do so or it may be that this seller's patent gives him the exclusive right to the item in your country.

A good example of this is the Iphone 5 lightning adapters. Look at all the generics coming out of china. Legally the only company that can manufacture or sell them is Apple based on there patent.

I would look into his legal rights to the IP and challenge him if he is fraudulently laying claim to the IP rights. Otherwise you are out of luck.

This happens loads on Amazon, although the product might be some generic Chinese item the seller owes the EAN number for the listing.

I've been on both ends of this and amazon will remove your listing if you don't. Best thing to do is get your own EAN numbers to create your own listings

thats why as a rule of thumb i only sell under listings that have atleast 4 or 5 other sellers selling it , may mean more competition but you can rest assured that if you post a product under a listing with a good product rank and theres only one person selling it than its because they want it that way .. I gaurentee your not the first person hes run off.

well if this person is just putting a sticker on a general product, you can call up amazon and share this info. you would have to give up your supplier to them and some sort of proof that it is the same item

thats the worst rule of thumb ever. why not be the only seller and set the price for whatever you want?

thats fine and dandy if you want to create your own listings , and by all means it is the way to go in the end. but they take time to work their way up in PR so at first you will recieve little to no sales for a good wile , bandwagoning is the best way to make fast cash right away on a listing that has already built high product rank as you will recieve large sales off the bat , youl just have to put up with whos got the lowest price wars .

Why not make your own UPC and get a product line going? The other seller has been doing some advanced rights tactics - cant blame him

Not true. If the sticker is branded then there is no way for anyone else to legally replicate that product and under the eyes of amazon that would make any competitors products materially different. There is no point wasting time trying to fight this as you will lose and potentially lose your amazon account. Suck it up and move on.

Re: Seller Threatining me with copyright
 

Maybe the manufacturer has no idea that this person is putting a sticker on their product and reselling it. If I put my logo sticker on an iPhone I cant resell it as my own brand

That's because iphone is an apple brand and they would obviously not allow it. The seller states that this is a GENERIC item. There is no problem with branding such an item as long as its not patented by the manufacturer which in this case is highly unlikely. Most would be more than happy for you to brand their products as your own.

The item has no 'original' maker that's why i do not understand the IP rights.

Getting my own EAN is really difficult as i would need to register with the company that creates barcodes.

Luckily i did a google search and found an expired listing for the product!

I should learn from him and use this against this person who only under cuts me and immediately puts up a listing for the same product as me whenever i make a new listing :shocked:

barcodes can be bought online fairly cheap. I buy 10 for £35. If you list on an expired listing then you will not have any control over this should someone else decide to list against you. Get some barcodes and create your own listings. In the long run it is much easier.

The intellectual property can be anything. They could just put it in a bag and brand it with their name. They may even be making it up but this is a battle not worth fighting

I bought 10 UPC codes for $1 each. Sometimes they are only 50 cents. I think it has to do with the logo sticker they are putting on it.

Thanks everyone.

Can anyone PM details on where to get ups barcodes for the UK?

Also if i list my own listing with my own 'company sticker' and brand name on amazon there's no chance someone can report the listing to amazon and get me another 'policy violation'?

My advice is just get off the listing.

I have just had an Amazon account booted for IP infringement. 3 year old account turned over more than 1 million last year and because of 2 -- yes 2 complaints from 'IP Owners' -- for this read other sellers selling unbranded Chinese goods but owning the EAN of the listing, we have been life banned.

Amazon sucks sometimes.

They are making it up that is a guarantee. This product sells like crazy! So if i list myself i can list the same item as long as i put my brand sticker on it? I cannot be reported again if i create the listing?


I've already been banned from the listing. So i cannot list the same product with my own EAN? Wow amazing turn over i don't know how i would have reacted when the ban hammer dropped. I've had more than 2 complaints but im still up- maybe amazon knows the claim is not strong as it was made by a solicitor company! Probably paid by the amazon seller to make the claim for them!

You can definitely list the same product with your own EAN no problem. Just don't use his name

It is going to take awhile to sell them if it is a new listing. Make sure you use every tag word you can think of when you create the listing.

Have you also just been reinstated?

Unfortunately not

how the hell do you turn over 1 million im lucky if i make a tenner a month

Right, like he's going to tell you the secrets of his success, lol. Honestly, I figure most of the people on this forum make at least 5k profit per month. Usually because most of us do this full time and have the dedication to this line of work to have researched enough to find this forum.

Anyway, didn't mean to get sidetracked from what I was intending on saying. OP I would suggest getting off the listing immediately and just apologizing. I had a 100% legit golden account suspended exactly 3 months ago to the day for this exact reason. If the seller has lawyers.. and he chooses to use them to send legal documents of the infringement to Amazon.. there is a very good chance Amazon will suspend your account, no questions asked.

Situation:
1. This was a generic China item
2. The seller threatened me in Amazon messages (with no consequences other than a supposed warning)
3. The seller attempted to buy all 1000 of my units which were FBA. Luckily I saw this coming because he warned me he would do it via Amazon messages. He said he would A-to-Z claim the entire order and keep the merchandise or send back broken stuff anyway. (I was able to contact FBA and have them manually cancel it, 100 units still got through however)
4. After all that shyt, Amazon still suspended my account 1 month after it had happened. Btw, after the BS, I chose to stop selling on the listings.. the suspension still came within the 1 month.
5. I appealed and didn't even get a canned response. Nothing came.. ever.
6. I complained to the BBB, it was a huge waste of time. Amazon gave 3 canned responses to the BBB; finally in the last response they admitted that my account would never be reinstated.

Conclusion: I did not infringe upon anything. Legally, I was correct. I would have only been infringing if I put the other seller's logo on the generic merchandise, which I did not. Theoretically, you can sell an icecube tray to someone through an iMac listing, but the customer won't be happy and eventually you'll get canned for it. You are not infringing upon anything because you weren't claiming it was something else.. you didn't put iMac on the icecube tray. In my case, the seller did not have special rights to the generic China crap.. they merely had a registered trademark, which I never infringed upon.

Welcome to the future of Amazon. This is how more advanced sellers are playing the game. If done successfully, revenues are much higher. I was not mad at the seller that did this to me. I was inspired.

Sellers who have the power with amazon have been known to try and push little sellers out of the way with using any means possible.

If you are correct and in the right I would fight it back.

You are allowed to threaten people with phony A-Z claims thru Amazon messages and get away with it???? WOW!

How do you get your own EAN numbers?

Indeed! I was even on the phone with an FBA rep who was completely on my side. He involved his manager, said that they would send them a warning. After that, the BS STILL persisted from the seller. Another "warning" was sent out. I was thinking to myself, "hehe, these guys must not know how much they are playing with fire." This business (by my calculations) is grossing somewhere between 1m - 2m on up per year. If it were me, I wouldn't have risked such behavior. But as I said in my previous post, none of that mattered. I was the one that got banned and I can say with about 80% certainty that it was because of the seller's lawyers. They tried to sue me as well.. and tried to buy a couple items directly from me (rather than fba). Luckily it was very obvious. I reported this to Amazon, letting them know that this business is attempting to buy items from me repeated to extort information (my address). And this was of course just so they can serve me and make my life more difficult.

Even though I was in the right here, this extortion is extremely effective. If another seller can actually serve you, you need to respond, otherwise a default judgment is given. If you have to pay to defend yourself and they're out of state (most likely the case), you are super boned. You really have to be careful where you step when selling on Amazon now. Trust me bros, I have been served, so I know the deal..

:eek: Absolutely unreal... actually it was Amazon that steered you down the wrong path to begin with. If they hadn`t misled you about what would/could happen you wouldnt have suffered this ordeal. I am sitting here flabbergasted. Geez you figure some generic crap has got to be safest thing to sell and then go thru this hell, forced to play chicken with a well-heeled seller with a bunch of pitbull lawyers. So how is someone supposed to know in advance what listing is OK to sell under?

The successful sellers on AZ know the ins and outs - if I had a hot item on AZ I would push people out too - its the trade.

Well in the future when I create my own listing with an unbranded item I will put my logo on the package and listing and boot anyone who tries to infringe.

This is just another reason why to have multiple accounts.

^That seems to be what everyone is doing. So now instead of having like 2 or 3 listings for a certain item, you often times have 8+

It's saddening to see something like 10 listings for the exact same thing being called 10 different things. Amazon has been trying to prevent duplicate listings for a long time. I'm sure plenty of you have seen 2 listings that you're selling on be combined into one. But it feels like Amazon has given up now. They surely must know what has been going on, but it perpetuates anyway. I'm not sure the sellers market will exist like this in the distant future, but for now it's somewhat of a necessary evil I suppose.

The trouble is that applying a different brand to a generic product does effectively make this a different product. Each brand has worth something different when compared with another and thus the value proposition is different - Consider Value Tesco Beans and Heinz Beans - same beans, different package.

Thanks for the replies

I finally had the time to challenge this- the seller has prob made a few thousand since this started.

The thing is putting your own sticker on the packaging without permission from the manufacturer is not legal. Also i will buy his product and im pretty sure the barcode will be different from the one he listed- will also report that.

I could make my own listing in the time being...but then amazon can violate you for making a listing thats's already in the catalouge. Im starting to like ebays VeRO policy after all this :shocked:

If the manufacturer sells it as generic then it's perfectly legal to brand it himself, with or without their permission.

It sounds like the seller branded his product and created a listing for it. If that's what he did and you clicked "sell yours here". Then he is using Amazon policy to get your product removed. This keeps you from piggybacking on his listing page with your unbranded item even if it is from the same seller in china. He created the listing and got the product reviews if any for the product. He is also actively keeping others from coming in and undercutting his selling price which I'm sure is what you were going to do. This way his products value doesn't tank to next to nothing. Because, what's the difference everyone is getting them from china for next to nothing, and many products get destroyed in value since someone in that demographic is happy making a profit of 1%.


If you brand your own you can create your own listing. You'll need to get a UPC code for your product. Then you can add it to the Amazon catalog, and when you do, be sure to protect the listing like the seller you were going to piggyback on and the item will not lose it's value.

No you can't, Apple has branded their iphone. You can certainly brand a generic set of wires from china. So long as they are truely generic and you pay for a UPC code. This meets Amazon's requirments. Many people do it there.

You mean, exactly what you did to him? When you're on his side of the street, he's a genius right?

They do it the right way. The only reason they were found in the first place is because of the value and ranking of the product, the value is high because the seller keeps other parisites off his listing. If he did not, the listing would be selling for next to nothing. Most people that found his listing thought "I'll sell it for 1 cent less" or "I'll sell it for $1 less" etc, until it is worthless. If you created a listing and followed policy to keep others from selling your branded item, you would not think these sellers are doing anything wrong.

These sellers are not doing anything wrong, it is perfectly legal to brand a generic product, and this is within Amazon's policy. These sellers are guilty of being well educated and informed in what they are doing.