Amazon Sellers’ News 9/23/19 with CJ Rosenbaum
Intellectual property complaints being asserted against third party sellers who are selling branded products.
We’ve been reporting on this per several days, I think we hit it on Wednesday and Friday and again today because we keep having sellers contacting us who have multiple intellectual property rights against them. The big brands are making more complaints: Sony, Samsung, Apple, the smaller brands are making complaints, and Amazon is allowing these complaints to build up and build up and build upon your accounts. Then boom, you get one more, and your account gets suspended. You need to know that this is an ongoing problem. You need to know this is a growing problem.
As you get complaints, you should address them as they roll in before a suspension, and if you’ve been suspended because you have had multiple IP complaints and all of a sudden you got one more and that caused your suspension, contact us. You need to address the most recent ones first. You need to get some traction, you need to show that you are not violating IP rights. Then you can get reinstated.
If you are an investor, if you have a utility patent for a device and there are hijackers possibly coming from your own factories, we want you to take a look at the neutral patent evaluation process that Amazon has developed. Rob Siegel, our managing attorney when it comes to this area, has been remarkably successful. If you have a utility patent and you have hijackers, even if they’re selling the same products from your own factory, you can apply for the patent evaluation program. The cost is fairly minimal. Once you win, you can knock out all the hijackers who have violated your utility patent.
Amazon is competing against third-party sellers on price because Amazon is not paying for its inventory.
Now when Amazon sees that you’re doing well with a product, Amazon will often go to its Amazon vendors and ask those vendors to get it inventoried. Amazon as the vendors to serve as its source, or its distributor, or its wholesaler. Amazon will often then receive complaints at the products it’s receiving by going around the brand are counterfeit. Amazon in cases that we have seen does not stop selling products it has counterfeit complaints. Amazon doesn’t even stop ordering from those vendors. You would be surprised. We had a case, 160 counterfeit complaints. What did Amazon do? They kept ordering from that vendor.. The way this hurts Amazon’s third-party sellers is that they kept selling the products with no costs for its inventory. They also hurt the Amazon vendor by not paying its bills and continuing to order supplies.
Third party sellers be aware Amazon will often compete against you without ever paying for the inventory so it has a 100% profit margin. And if you’re an Amazon vendor, you need to be careful. Never let Amazon’s debt to you get so big that it can put you out of business, because if Amazon has complaints about the products you are delivering, it will stop paying you, and we have seen Amazon continue to order. Never let that debt get out of hand.
