How to Avoid Trademark Infringement Complaints as an Online Seller
You want to make a million dollars creating your own brand and selling it on Amazon? We’re going to be talking about how to avoid trademark complaints and United States Patented Trademark Office mistakes.
Okay, so the United States Patented Trademark Office, the US PTO makes tons of mistakes. I saw an article that said that they issue tens of thousands of invalid trademarks every year. What is invalid? It means the government granted the application, but the government should not have granted that application. So among lawyers who deal with this stuff, we refer to those marks as invalid marks.
So what are the problems that you face on Amazon when it comes to trademarks?
Number one, inadvertent inclusion of somebody else’s trademark. So if you’re selling a product and you include somebody else’s mark or a phrase that someone else has registered and the government has approved, you’re going to get a complaint or you’re at risk a complaint.
Number two, you’d be surprised at how many brands own words or phrases that you would never think would get trademarked. Someone owns a trademark to productivity planner. It’s a registered mark. So let’s say you’re making a really cool notebook and it has the date and time you’re organizing your day and you’re selling it on Amazon through your own mark and you call it a productivity planner. Guess what? You’re at risk of a trademark violation.
Number three, descriptive use invalidates many claims. This is all circling back to complaints made by the US PTO, because they’re not supposed to approve marks that are descriptive in nature. What does that mean? What’s all this legal jargon, CJ? Well, if you try to use the word apple to sell apples, it is descriptive. The word apple describes the fruit apple. No good, invalid, even if the government approves it. But if you do something like Apple on computers, it doesn’t describe what the product is. So that’s what I’m talking about. Descriptive use invalidates trademarks whether or not the government has approved them.
Do you want to learn more about trademark infringement complaints? We wrote the greatest book in the world on trademark law for Amazon sellers. You can download it for a small donation to the Ty Louis Campbell Foundation. It’s an incredible foundation that raises money for pediatric cancers. Please don’t donate the minimum. Please buck up, donate as much as you can, and you will get the greatest book in the world on trademark law for Amazon sellers.