HUGE Advantage for Amazon Sellers Using Rule 65 to Seek Damages when Sued by Brands
Intellectual property complaints can cause a tremendous amount of stress & worrying for sellers on the Amazon platform.
While big brands may have a large number of resources at their disposal, Amazon sellers have what we like to call a ‘nuclear weapon’ at their disposal: Rule 65.
Rule 65 is a way for sellers, who are wrongfully enjoined by a temporary restraining order or some other preliminary injunction, to seek damages when the people who have filed their claim/lawsuit against you voluntarily dismiss the case.
The keyword in understanding Rule 65 is the word “enjoined”. Enjoined means that a court has ordered you or someone else to do something or stop doing something. In terms of Amazon sellers, this almost always results in a temporary restraining order that tells Amazon to freeze your selling account, money and inventory.
Amazon isn’t the only place that these orders are served. Sellers who are hit with a temporary restraining order can also see their orders and inventory frozen on other selling platforms, like eBay, Etsy or any other place a seller has sales. Our experience dealing with these orders have shown that they transcend selling platforms to affect sellers. In a few instances, clients who have their own websites have been frozen out of their PayPal accounts from money generated on their site.
When big brands impose their will on sellers through wrongful lawsuits and orders, it isn’t just frozen assets that a seller may be faced with. Temporary restraining orders take a seller out of an already crowded marketplace. The time spent in limbo when sued by brands leads sellers to lose sales, both immediately and in the long term, and rack up attorney fees to fight these complaints.
All of this because a big brand & their lawyers have convinced a court to wrongfully freeze your account/assets.
These big brands will resort to convincing a court that you’re selling counterfeit merchandise or try to persuade a judge that your entire account is based upon the products at issue. In many cases, these claims are simply not true and big brands will often simply drop the lawsuit if they realize these claims are unwarranted. Even with the lawsuit and order dropped, sellers have still already suffered a tremendous loss with no consequences on these brands for their false claims.
How does Rule 65 help sellers?
Rule 65 gives a seller the ability to fight back against these claims and have their day in court.
With many of these temporary orders often being granted with no chance to defend against what these big brands are claiming, sellers are left feeling helpless and dealing with the fallout. Rule 65 holds these brands accountable for the damages and impact on your business. These big brands hire law firms that often cast an extremely broad net to catch as many sellers as they can with little care to the impact. When shown that these claims are false, big brands oftentimes will cut you loose voluntarily. When this happens, they open themselves up for sellers to use Rule 65.
All those lost sales and lost profits can be sought with Rule 65. Even attorney’s fees because you never should have had your accounts frozen, and you never should have sustained those losses. So, even if the lawyers in the brands cut you loose on their own, you can still go after them. If you fight to get released, you can go after them. With Rule 65, sellers finally have a weapon at their disposal to fight back when big brands attempt to wrongfully impose their will.
This firm has grown through its tremendous experience representing sellers against big brands.
If you’ve suffered losses because you’ve been sued by brands, or are having trouble fighting false claims at the hands of these brands, reach out to us for a free consultation 1-877-9-SELLER.
We’ll do everything we can to help you resolve your issue.
