Intellectual Property Suspensions on Amazon: what to do?

Selling on Amazon often times can be challenging, especially for beginners who do not know all the pitfalls of the market. And not reading Amazon policies but just clicking “I agree”, quite frankly, does not make it all easier to avoid possible problems one can face while doing business on the most dynamically growing marketplace on the planet.

One of those problems can happen even with your first listing – you receive an e-mail from Amazon stating you violated someone else’s intellectual property rights. The notice usually looks like this:

Hello,

Your Amazon selling account has been deactivated. Your listings 
have been removed. Funds will not be transferred to you but will 
be held in your account while we work with you to address this 
issue. Please ship any open orders to avoid further impact to your 
account.

Why did this happen?
We arrived at this decision because your account has received 
multiple intellectual property violations and we did not receive 
any new information regarding your listings or selling history.

You can view your account performance and more details on the ASIN(s) at (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/performance/dashboard?reftag=email_block 1) or select Account Health on the home screen of the Amazon Seller app on your iOS or Android device. The Account Health dashboard shows how well your account is performing against the performance metrics and policies required to sell on Amazon.

We’re here to help.
If you need help better understanding what is causing this, please search for “Intellectual Property Violations” in Seller Central Help (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/201361070 3).

How do I reactivate my account?
To reactivate your selling account, please send us the following:
A plan of action that explains:
– The root cause(s).
– The actions you have taken to resolve the notices of infringement or violation of Amazon’s policies.
– The steps you have taken to prevent infringement or violating Amazon’s policies.

For security reasons, we only accept attachments in the following file formats: .jpeg, .jpg, .pjpeg, .gif, .png, .tiff. These documents must be authentic and unaltered.

How do I send the required information?
Please submit this information by clicking the “Reactivate your account” button on Account Health (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/performance/dashboard)”

What happens if I do not send the requested information?
If we do not receive the requested information, your account will remain deactivated and funds in your account may be held for 90 days or longer. Depending on your account status and activities, you may be required to complete an additional review before funds can be released. Amazon may withhold payments if we determine that your account was used to sell inauthentic or prohibited goods, commit fraud, or engage in other illegal or abusive activity.

– iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amazon-Seller/id794141485
– Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.sellermobile.android&hl=en

Sincerely,
Seller Performance Team
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com

These notices come to you when the IP right’s owner files a complaint to Amazon stating that somebody infringes its rights. The thing with Amazon is that they suspend the alleged infringer’s account first and then ‘dive deep’ into the issue by contacting you to clarify the situation. So the claimer can easily be just one of your competitors who want to hold you back. The good thing is if you have everything right and in order, it’s relatively easy to get reinstated. The first thing to do is do not panic. Especially if you are pretty much sure, you didn’t infringe anyone’s IP rights.

The next step, and probably the most important one, is to find out the reason that triggered Amazon. In order to do so, you should at least have an idea of what IP rights you can possibly violate. Let’s quickly go through all of them.

Intellectual Property for Amazon sellers involves:
• Copyright Claims
• Allegations of Trademark infringement
• Trade Dress accusations
• Claims of Patent violations.

Copyright. Copyrights are legal protections for authorship works. On Amazon, it comes down to the use of someone else’s images or verbiage.

Trademarks. Trademarks are legal protections for a word, symbol, design, or combination of them that a company uses to identify its goods and services. On Amazon, it usually narrows down to situations when a seller sells counterfeit under someone’s trademarks or sells the products that are original but a seller has not obtained the products directly from the manufacturer or its authorized supplier. Also when a brand assumes that the seller sells counterfeit, but a seller doesn’t.

Patents. Patents are legal protections for inventions. The issues with patent violations arise when a seller sells products that are manufactured without the patent holder’s consent.

So eventually, now it is time to find the reason why the right’s holder filed the complaint. First of all, check the invoices you have from the manufacturer or its authorized supplier. If you don’t have any, or if your supplier is not an authorized supplier, you are in trouble. If you find yourself in this position, this almost definitely is the reason why Amazon has taken action against you. The authenticity of the products is taken very seriously by Amazon.
However, if the invoices are alright, it seems that you are safe under the “First Sale Doctrine”. Then it’s time to check your listings on Amazon and assure they are in compliance with copyright law. Maybe recently you or your co-workers or employees used (without consent) images from other websites to create a listing? Or you have used the product description your competitor wrote for his/her listings? If so, that’s where you’ve made a mistake.
If after thorough inspection you have found no evidence of any IP infringement, there are big chances this complaint was baseless or filed by mistake.

After taking all the steps mentioned above, you should start to resolve the issue. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Amazon usually requires a seller to contact the right owner to try and solve the issue with him/her directly. To do so, you should write to the right’s owner to the e-mail mentioned in Amazon suspension notice a letter that may look like this:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Complainant,

I am the principal of Starter and I write to you to address the issue with alleged IP rights infringement, according to your complaint Complaint ID on Amazon.com.

We believe that your complaint about us allegedly infringing your copyrights was filed in mistake. After a thorough investigation within our company we have detected no Intellectual Property violations whatsoever. Please look through the attached files to ensure that we have all the rights to use every intellectual property object we use – from copyrights on our images and texts (we photograph the products we sell and write texts to them all by ourselves), to trademarks and patents (please see invoices from the official suppliers of the brands we work with attached, meaning we sell original products only). 

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this letter is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive intellectual property right that is allegedly infringed.
Hopefully, you will consider our effort to prove that we do our business complying with all the laws, rules and regulations just as Amazon requires us to do.

In the light of the mentioned above we kindly ask you to withdraw your complaint Complaint ID from Amazon.com using following language:
“Dear Amazon, we, Mr./Mrs. Complainant, hereby withdraw the intellectual property right complaint previously asserted against Starter, Seller ID”.

Sincerely,
The principal of Starter.

To be honest, right’s owners do not usually withdraw their complaints, even if they’re obviously wrong. If the complaint hasn’t been withdrawn you should write another letter where it is better to state some legal positions for the matter, showing that if the baseless complaint won’t be withdrawn there can be further consequences involving courtrooms and lawyers.

If the complainant does not respond this time too, we must file a counter-notice to counter-notice@amazon.com. The letter may look as following:

Dear Amazon.com Legal Department

This letter is a formal response to a claim of copyright infringement against ASIN. I believe the claims of copyright infringement made by Mr./Mrs. Complaint should not be taken into consideration and rejected because:
- The right’s owner has not provided any documents assuring that the allegedly infringed IP rights belong to him/her or has the legal right to represent the right’s owner for the matter;
- The complainant has provided no copyright registration information or other tangible evidence that the material in question is in fact copyrighted, and I have a good faith belief that it is not.
-The complaint does not follow the prescribed form for notification of an alleged copyright violation as set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Art. 512 (3).
I declare, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the complaint of copyright violation is based on mistaken information, misidentification of the material in question, or deliberate misreading of the law.
I ask that Amazon.com, upon receipt of this counter-notification, restore the material in dispute, unless the complainant files suit against me within ten (10) days, pursuant to 17 USC 512(g)(2)(B).

My name, address, and telephone number are:
Name
Address
Phone number

I hereby consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which I reside (or, if my address is outside the United States, the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the San Francisco, California judicial district).
I agree to accept service of process from the complainant.

Sincerely,
The principal of Starter.

If you have really infringed no one’s IP rights, this should be enough, Amazon will reinstate the account. But if you on purpose or by mistake infringed someone’s IP rights, you must submit a decent Plan of Action to show you understand the issue, already corrected it, and made sure it would never happen again. It may look like the following:

Dear Seller Performance Team,

I am the principal of Starter and I write to you due to the suspension of our seller account because of reported Intellectual Property rights infringement.

THE ROOT CAUSE

-	We have received a complaint from the right’s owner regarding trademark infringement because the right’s owner believes we have used his trademark to label our products;
-	This issue occurred because we have failed to check with USPTO if the trademark is already registered.

THE CORRECTIVE ACTIONS

-	Removed the item from the listing until the issue is fully resolved;
-	Conducted full inspection of our inventory and removed the infringing products;
-	Contacted our manufacturing facility for them to stop putting the trademark protected label onto the packaging of our products;
-	Read all the Amazon policies once again to assure our employees understand its requirements.

THE PREVENTIVE ACTIONS

-	Checked all the items both on our website and physical inventory with USPTO whether any more of items infringe other trademark rights;
-	Fired the employee who proposed to use the infringing trademark and failed to check it with USPTO and appointed a well-trained and experienced employee to the position;
-	Established once-a-month training sessions for our employees on Intellectual Property Laws for them to better understand the topic and minimize possibility of mistakes;
-	Reached an agreement with the trademark lawyer for him to conduct registration of any new trademarks we want to use with USPTO.

We appreciate our privilege to work with Amazon.com and will do everything it takes to keep the customers trust. Hopefully, you will consider our effort and reinstate our seller account. Thank you for working with us on this issue.

Sincerely,

The principal of Starter.

If all these appeals should fail, the seller’s account will be suspended permanently. There is a possibility, though, to appeal further – to the Policy Team and even Bezos’ Team. If you are unsure that your appeal was taken seriously by someone from the Seller Performance Team, this is the way to finally get the justice you are seeking for.