Rob Segall and CJ Rosenbaum sit down to talk about how our firm handles Amazon sellers who receive Intellectual Property Right Complaints (otherwise called Rights Owner Complaints).
The first step is to analyze the complaint and product, and establish if the complaint is valid. We look at the listing identified that belongs to our client and the theory of infringement identified in the letter / notification that our client received. We then determine if the complainant has a valid reason for reporting our client. Most of the time, they don’t.
The 4 basic categories of IP Rights:
1. Trademark
2. Copyright
3. Patent
4. Trade Dress
If we know there is no violation because you’re selling a genuine product, it makes correspondence to whoever made the complaint pretty easy to do. We write to them and explain why you aren’t violating anyone’s intellectual property rights.
The vast majority of IP complaints are 100% baseless, totally bogus, and used to limit competition.
Selling Genuine Products? If yes, the complaint is probably 100% baseless!
Sellers often refer to our correspondence as “legal letters”.
The Process:
We draft a letter and explain why our client isn’t violating any trademark, copyright, patent or trade dress rights.
The First Sale Doctrine applies broadly throughout all areas of intellectual property. Essentially, as long as someone is buying and selling a product that matches the condition it’s received in when purchased from the manufacturer, then they are excused from any potential liability for intellectual property infringement.
As long as a 3rd party seller delivers a product to the consumer that’s not materially different than what the brand would deliver, they are not violating anybody’s rights.
If a brand refuses to withdraw a baseless complaint, does that brand have any potential liability?
They do. The most important thing to consider is that on Amazon and most ecommerce platforms, there’s a penalty of perjury prevision that all complainants must click and agree to before submitting a complaint.
Basically, all complaints on Amazon are submitted under penalty of perjury that the person submitting the complaint has authority to submit the complaint and that they have a good faith basis that the complaint is valid.
Negotiating the withdrawal of an Intellectual Property Right Complaint:
One of the benefits of hiring our firm is that we are always willing to pick up the phone and call the rights owner.