Account Deactivated due to Intellectual Property Complaints
Hello Seller Community,
We have recently had our account deactivated due to some IP Complaints on 3 ASINS within the space of 6 days this took our account into the “At Risk” Health Zone on our Account Health Dashboard.
It’s taken me 2 days to write a submission in response from them asking for Greater details on the first submission i sent in along with the request for Details on how the account has complied with the policys and examples of the compliance.
Here is the first message from them regarding the notices and i rsponded with a POA however they’ve asked for more detail. mine current response letter is below, it’s not a short read as i’m doing my best to be as detailed & specific as possible. Any assistance or guidance is very much appreciated as this account is my business in a nut shell really.
I’ve not finished the last part yet which is examples of complying with the policies.
Notice one:
– Date: 3/25/2022
_-- ASIN: B07WDLPYK6 _
– Name of Rights Owner: JML Brand Protection
_-- Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT _
Notice two:
– Date: 3/23/2022
_-- ASIN: B08QD4BQ59 _
– Name of Rights Owner: 刘博
– Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT
Notice three:
– Date: 3/19/2022
_-- ASIN: B08399M2Q5 _
– Name of Rights Owner: ETAOLINE
– Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT
Notice four:
– Date: 11/13/2021
_-- ASIN: B00R7LMMO2 _
– Name of Rights Owner: Abbey
– Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT
What i’ve written so far is here and i’ve not submitted this yet.
Dear Amazon Seller Performance Team,
The root causes of the infringements are because of the lack of knowledge on Intellectual property and understanding the differences of branded listings and non-branded listings between our two teams. Our buying team failed to & prove authenticity of these products neither did they purchase them from the Brand Owners or a Licenced Distributor, this meant that our listing and selling team were not able to identify any issues that we now understand. We were using their listing and detail page to sell the product, which is violating their rights of the brand owner, our internal processes were not up to standard to the extent whereby as a collective the business and its teams weren’t able to produce the forms of due diligence allowing us to identify any potential issues before they arose, this was crucial mistake between the two teams because of our internal processes and a serious lack of knowledge, as a small business our processes were limited and formed a small part of what we did & how we did business, however this has given us the chance to rethink our entire business model and ways of doing business especially whilst selling on Amazon.co.uk.
The actions we have taken to resolve the complaints are that we have analysed the situation and we understand what the complainant wants from their complaint. we have emailed the rights owners in order to explain our mistakes and we have given them written agreement that we no longer have the inventory, and we have guaranteed them we will not sell their products without their authorisation & have apologised for any potential inconveniences or damages we have made to their business. We have requested a retraction letter to be sent to Amazon directly from these rights owners.
In order to prevent any further infringement going forward for us to obtain a long-term business on Amazon we have a strict set of rules which all our staff now adhere to as well as an Intellectual Property Study each Friday whereby the entire office would go through examples of potential IP Violations & infringements. We’ve also become more knowledgeable on branded listings & related content. We have put training in place for our staff about the policies with fortnightly refresher sessions, in addition Leon will be assessing any work that could involve a potential IP violation for the next 6 months as he has also addressed the IP awareness to the staff and I Joshua will be responsible for requesting letters of authorisation from Brand owners before selling any product of theirs, which includes going through the vetting process & utilising references in order to gain verification on the suppliers. We have also put measures in place so we will not buy products unless we are buying direct from the Brand owner or a licensed distributor who can provide us with proof of authenticity and traceability for that product or products.
We understand the severity of trademark, copyright & patent infringements as we have utilised the Gov.uk website in order to educate the team of staff at Sur-Pros International Ltd. Please see the attached documents our staff will be using going forward to Vet new suppliers, these documents will help us determine the authenticity of new suppliers & also assist us with analysing listings making sure we are aware and understand the product and brands owners’ rights preventing & guaranteeing no further violations. In addition to the above we’ve also incorporated a new rule across the company for Amazon Listings, called “Get to know your Listing” these focus on 3 steps in order to assess our listings & other sellers’ listings. Step 1. Proof all visual content ensuring there are no trademarked content that could potentially violate any rights Step 2. Proof all written content ensuring we are not violating any rights Step 3. (If the listing is not ours and we have authorisation to sell the product) We will make a test buy in order to assess the product being sold guaranteeing the sellers & our product are identical preventing issues for us on an IP basis.
On an additional note, we have also consulted a lawyer who specialises in IP Infringements, and they have clarified some details for us, we are confident we have deleted all issues which led to these Violations.
We are using these links to educate ourselves further:
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/help/hub/reference/G2N3GKE5SGSHWYRZ
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/help/hub/reference/201361070
https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/trade-marks
Our account now complies with the policies in place as we are not violating any brand owner rights, we are not using any trademarked/copyrighted content on our listings, all our content is our own as we have invested in our own resources such as a light box & professional camera equipment. We’ve removed any potentially infringing content and our staff are now fully compliant with the policies in place preventing this from happening in the future. We have liquidated and disposed of any products that would potentially cause threats to us as a business on an IP basis.
We now know that the products we have received IP Violations for aren’t replicated forms of the branded items but also not too dissimilar, there are many variations of these items on the market today and we can show these weren’t using any form of trademark nor copyrighted content however we now understand the listings were branded and our products weren’t.
A legal representative has advised us that our account is now complying with all policies in place for us to continue selling on Amazon.
Some greater detail on evidence or examples that demonstrate that our account has complied with the policy,
Thanks
Joshua Abrahamson
Sur-Pros International Ltd
Account Deactivated due to Intellectual Property Complaints
Hello Seller Community,
We have recently had our account deactivated due to some IP Complaints on 3 ASINS within the space of 6 days this took our account into the “At Risk” Health Zone on our Account Health Dashboard.
It’s taken me 2 days to write a submission in response from them asking for Greater details on the first submission i sent in along with the request for Details on how the account has complied with the policys and examples of the compliance.
Here is the first message from them regarding the notices and i rsponded with a POA however they’ve asked for more detail. mine current response letter is below, it’s not a short read as i’m doing my best to be as detailed & specific as possible. Any assistance or guidance is very much appreciated as this account is my business in a nut shell really.
I’ve not finished the last part yet which is examples of complying with the policies.
Notice one:
– Date: 3/25/2022
_-- ASIN: B07WDLPYK6 _
– Name of Rights Owner: JML Brand Protection
_-- Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT _
Notice two:
– Date: 3/23/2022
_-- ASIN: B08QD4BQ59 _
– Name of Rights Owner: 刘博
– Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT
Notice three:
– Date: 3/19/2022
_-- ASIN: B08399M2Q5 _
– Name of Rights Owner: ETAOLINE
– Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT
Notice four:
– Date: 11/13/2021
_-- ASIN: B00R7LMMO2 _
– Name of Rights Owner: Abbey
– Infringement Type: COUNTERFEIT
What i’ve written so far is here and i’ve not submitted this yet.
Dear Amazon Seller Performance Team,
The root causes of the infringements are because of the lack of knowledge on Intellectual property and understanding the differences of branded listings and non-branded listings between our two teams. Our buying team failed to & prove authenticity of these products neither did they purchase them from the Brand Owners or a Licenced Distributor, this meant that our listing and selling team were not able to identify any issues that we now understand. We were using their listing and detail page to sell the product, which is violating their rights of the brand owner, our internal processes were not up to standard to the extent whereby as a collective the business and its teams weren’t able to produce the forms of due diligence allowing us to identify any potential issues before they arose, this was crucial mistake between the two teams because of our internal processes and a serious lack of knowledge, as a small business our processes were limited and formed a small part of what we did & how we did business, however this has given us the chance to rethink our entire business model and ways of doing business especially whilst selling on Amazon.co.uk.
The actions we have taken to resolve the complaints are that we have analysed the situation and we understand what the complainant wants from their complaint. we have emailed the rights owners in order to explain our mistakes and we have given them written agreement that we no longer have the inventory, and we have guaranteed them we will not sell their products without their authorisation & have apologised for any potential inconveniences or damages we have made to their business. We have requested a retraction letter to be sent to Amazon directly from these rights owners.
In order to prevent any further infringement going forward for us to obtain a long-term business on Amazon we have a strict set of rules which all our staff now adhere to as well as an Intellectual Property Study each Friday whereby the entire office would go through examples of potential IP Violations & infringements. We’ve also become more knowledgeable on branded listings & related content. We have put training in place for our staff about the policies with fortnightly refresher sessions, in addition Leon will be assessing any work that could involve a potential IP violation for the next 6 months as he has also addressed the IP awareness to the staff and I Joshua will be responsible for requesting letters of authorisation from Brand owners before selling any product of theirs, which includes going through the vetting process & utilising references in order to gain verification on the suppliers. We have also put measures in place so we will not buy products unless we are buying direct from the Brand owner or a licensed distributor who can provide us with proof of authenticity and traceability for that product or products.
We understand the severity of trademark, copyright & patent infringements as we have utilised the Gov.uk website in order to educate the team of staff at Sur-Pros International Ltd. Please see the attached documents our staff will be using going forward to Vet new suppliers, these documents will help us determine the authenticity of new suppliers & also assist us with analysing listings making sure we are aware and understand the product and brands owners’ rights preventing & guaranteeing no further violations. In addition to the above we’ve also incorporated a new rule across the company for Amazon Listings, called “Get to know your Listing” these focus on 3 steps in order to assess our listings & other sellers’ listings. Step 1. Proof all visual content ensuring there are no trademarked content that could potentially violate any rights Step 2. Proof all written content ensuring we are not violating any rights Step 3. (If the listing is not ours and we have authorisation to sell the product) We will make a test buy in order to assess the product being sold guaranteeing the sellers & our product are identical preventing issues for us on an IP basis.
On an additional note, we have also consulted a lawyer who specialises in IP Infringements, and they have clarified some details for us, we are confident we have deleted all issues which led to these Violations.
We are using these links to educate ourselves further:
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/help/hub/reference/G2N3GKE5SGSHWYRZ
https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/help/hub/reference/201361070
https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/trade-marks
Our account now complies with the policies in place as we are not violating any brand owner rights, we are not using any trademarked/copyrighted content on our listings, all our content is our own as we have invested in our own resources such as a light box & professional camera equipment. We’ve removed any potentially infringing content and our staff are now fully compliant with the policies in place preventing this from happening in the future. We have liquidated and disposed of any products that would potentially cause threats to us as a business on an IP basis.
We now know that the products we have received IP Violations for aren’t replicated forms of the branded items but also not too dissimilar, there are many variations of these items on the market today and we can show these weren’t using any form of trademark nor copyrighted content however we now understand the listings were branded and our products weren’t.
A legal representative has advised us that our account is now complying with all policies in place for us to continue selling on Amazon.
Some greater detail on evidence or examples that demonstrate that our account has complied with the policy,
Thanks
Joshua Abrahamson
Sur-Pros International Ltd
3 replies
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
My initial thought is that it is too long and overly wordy. My suggestion would be to stick with using the 3 sections that Amazon prefer, but use bullet points of only 1 or 2 sentences per bullet. Makes it easier to read and keeps you on track.
There’s also bit of a difference i think in what you say the root cause was initially - not buying direct from source - and what you later say which is basically that they looked to be fairly similar products but aren’t actually the brand you listed them as.
That difference proliferates through your appeal. Part of your solution is to use different suppliers - that’s only relevant if the items you bought were sold to you as being the brand on the ASINs by the supplier. If they sold you a generic cuddly banana and you listed it as “cuddly banana by Demel” because it looked the same, then the supplier is not to blame so your solution around the supply chain doesn’t really solve the underlying root cause. You really need to focus down on what exactly the root cause was and work forwards from there.
One common thread between appeals is making a business seem more grandiose than it really is. Maybe you do have a buying team and a listing team and maybe you did consult an IP lawyer, but if not then throwing in things like that just makes the appeal harder as you have to build in extra steps - for example you’re now committing to a weekly IP training / refresher. I can’t think of a single business where that would be a reasonable or plausible thing to do.
Seller_f6b3Tk8KSNX2A
Hello @Sur-Pros_Shop,
Thank you for contacting us.
I understand that you need help with the Intellectual property complaints on your account.
@Demel and @JillyB1 thank you for your inputs on the same.
Further, Further as I go through your plan of action, I would like to inform you that it still misses some important details which can be reworked.
Be concise, specific to the issue identified, work on the following points and think about long term solutions.
Root cause: What went wrong that the issue had come up?
- Did you seek permissions before mapping? If you have permissions, provide the same.
- If you do not agree to the claim, you must provide valid proofs to challenge this decision.
Corrective measures: After receiving the notification, what steps had you taken to resolve the issue?
- Did you contact the Right’s owner to get a better understanding of this issue?
- Did you reach out to your supplier to confirm if they were authorized to sell the brand in question?
- Did you check your existing listings to see for any infringement which may have gone unnoticed?
Preventive steps: Think long term!
- What are the changes you can bring in to control or to avoid similar violation?
- If you are not authorized to sell a brand, how will you make sure to not list it?
Here are a few more things to consider as you create your plan:
-
Did you fully comprehend the specific policies and the root cause that led to the action on the ASIN; - Removed all listing(s) you were reported for and associated or similar listings?
-
Provided a reasonable plan to avoid any policy violations in the future.
-
Provided valid invoices, letter of authorization, images, or licensing agreements.
-
Highlight areas in your supporting documents. You can make your response more relevant by circling or highlighting the area within your documents that is most important such as ASINs, Supplier details (for example, name and supplier website) or clauses within your Terms and Conditions.
Make sure to show your understanding of Amazon’s intellectual property policy.
If you need any further assistance, you can post your Plan of action here before submitting so that we or any of the sellers on forum can help you with more insights.
Regards,
Venessa
