Sellers offering counterfeit products

[agray34]

I create my own listings, under my own branded and trademarked name. I see competitors than hop on the listing. They do not sell my products since I am the only distributor. I will than email Amazon and hope they block the seller from the listing.

Is there any report I can run to indicate to me that another seller hoped onto my listing? I manually noticed these when on Amazon but I would imagine there is a report or some way to keep track of this...

TIA

[n8zzz]

Well, I assume you're getting generic crap from China and throwing a name on them that you trademarked. If this is the case, I'm not really sure you should refer to these as "my products". Not to fear, though! This is the new way of Amazon for the last 2-3 years.

Those with a smaller cash flow will simply report the other seller to Amazon. This can be effective, but quite hit or miss.

Those with large cash flow will lawyer the eff up, send official documents to Amazon, and hell, probably all of the above.

Welcome to the new wonderful world of selling on Amazon.

[Gamefreak]

Originally Posted by n8zzz

Well, I assume you're getting generic crap from China and throwing a name on them that you trademarked. If this is the case, I'm not really sure you should refer to these as "my products". Not to fear, though! This is the new way of Amazon for the last 2-3 years.

Those with a smaller cash flow will simply report the other seller to Amazon. This can be effective, but quite hit or miss.

Those with large cash flow will lawyer the eff up, send official documents to Amazon, and hell, probably all of the above.

Welcome to the new wonderful world of selling on Amazon.

he actually can do that if done correctly. had my listings removed by amazon when i try to piggy back onto cheap chinese generic crap

[agray34]

Originally Posted by n8zzz

Well, I assume you're getting generic crap from China and throwing a name on them that you trademarked. If this is the case, I'm not really sure you should refer to these as "my products". Not to fear, though! This is the new way of Amazon for the last 2-3 years.

Those with a smaller cash flow will simply report the other seller to Amazon. This can be effective, but quite hit or miss.

Those with large cash flow will lawyer the eff up, send official documents to Amazon, and hell, probably all of the above.

Welcome to the new wonderful world of selling on Amazon.

Like any other company, I have a trademark and have factories make my products to my specifications. Others than try to hop on my listings and sell their version of the product which is not my trademarked brand.

My questions is: How can I detect others hop onto my listings?

TIA

[n8zzz]

Originally Posted by agray34

Like any other company, I have a trademark and have factories make my products to my specifications.

How this usually works in the real world is that you designed a product, patented that, and then gave the design for the China factories to make the product for you. But in this scenario, I'm pretty sure what you're saying is that you just bought a bunch of something that already existed and had the factories either make special packaging with your logo or laser etched your logo into the product itself. So there's a bit of gray area here as to "who" actually "owns" what.

If however you did design something and others are copying your design and throwing your logo or their logo on it, then certainly you should be all lawyered up.

To your question, you cannot really detect it unless you have a 3rd party client that manages your inventory/listings in some way, for example an auto repricer that tells you when you don't have the buybox on a given listing; then you'd know when someone else is jumping on and taking sales away from you.

[kockedoff]

email them and tell them they are using your trad-mark and they cant do it, else you will report etc... that should work...

[GreenBean]

Originally Posted by agray34

Like any other company, I have a trademark and have factories make my products to my specifications. Others than try to hop on my listings and sell their version of the product which is not my trademarked brand.

My questions is: How can I detect others hop onto my listings?

TIA

Dont do that yourself.

Get your legal team to do the work.

[rsot]

Legal is the proper solution for lasting impact

[jeffweico]

Is the trademark actually registered or just claimed? It makes a big difference. In order to protect your trademark, certain things need to happen and the easiest way to make it enforceable is through registration.

Nobody is going to alert you when someone lists an item on your page. You will have to check your listings yourself. You can complain to Amazon that others are trying to sell under your listing, but unless you can prove ownership of the trademark, there is no way to guarantee what their response will be. That is why many people here are advising that you get professional legal advice from an attorney.

If you applied for a patent on your design, that might also be an angle you can pursue.

Resist the temptation to contact the other sellers via Amazon and threatening them - Amazon does not like that.

The bottom line here is that if you actually designed something and had it manufactured for you - and only you - then you should get legal help to protect your rights. If, however, the product is something like a generic HDMI cable and you made up a name and claim it as a trademark, you really don't have much legal ground to stand on. If that is the case, all you can really do is complain to Amazon and hope they remove the listings. There is no guarantee they will comply with your request, though.

[jeffweico]

Oh, also, your thread title is a bit misleading. Unless someone is copying your packaging, or your name and/or your product, that is not necessarily "counterfeiting".

In the example I used in my previous post, an HDMI cable - you can copyright your design and your packaging and you can also trademark the name, but you cannot claim that everyone selling HDMI cables is copying you and violating your rights. In this case, the standards for HDMI are set by the International Standards Organization. Unless you have added something substantial to the design that makes it better, you hae no more rights to the design than any other company.

[GreenBean]

agray34

Read jeffweico's post carefully.

If you have the relevant and legal paperwork, you take that approach.

[nerecit]

I'm sorry. People sell everything. No way to prevent that