Top 5 issues for an Amazon seller worried about intellectual property right complaints / IP complaint tips for sellers:
#1. Know your distributor: Know where you are getting the product(s) from. You want to know where your distributor sources from, where they are getting their products from. You want to show to Amazon that it was reputable and that you did everything you could to make sure that you were obtaining genuine products for Amazon’s customers.
#2. Confirm the complaint is valid: You need to make sure that the person filing the complaint is actually authorized to represent the brand or whatever intellectual property right they are trying to enforce.
#3. Know the First Sale Doctrine: If you buy a product, you can resell it, and you do not need anybody’s permission in the United States. You don’t need the brand’s permission because authorization is not part of the law here in the US. Distribution agreements aren’t enforced on the Amazon platform.
#4. Get retraction from the complainant: If your account or listing is down, it is important to possibly acquiesce to whoever the complainant is and get that retraction to Amazon. The first thing we do is we try to get the complaint withdrawn. This is where our special skills and our licenses as attorneys helps out. When they know that you have a lawyer standing there with you, they withdraw their complaint in the vast majority of times.
#5. Be prepared to compromise: It’s often times worth it to even approach the brand and say listen, we are willing to not sell, can we just try to work this out. If you are looking to get your account reinstated as quickly as possible or get your account health back up to par as quickly as possible, the best thing to do is to stop selling the product at issue.