Brands Persuade Judges to Issue Temporary Restraining Orders (TROs) resulting in Frozen Amazon Seller Accounts
Amazon sellers, I want to talk to you about a huge victory that we won in court at the end of last week for a seller’s account which was frozen under one of these ridiculous temporary restraining orders where the judge literally put 869 different small businesses out of business without ever hearing from a single one of them.
So here’s how these cases work…
Brands hire one of a handful of law firms who go to court, usually the federal court in Chicago, and they persuade these judges that you’re selling counterfeit products and destroying their brands.
The big argument they have is that there’s a huge Chinese conspiracy. Every case is a Chinese conspiracy. They persuade judges to issue temporary restraining orders that freeze your accounts, freeze your money, freeze your inventory.
The judges have no clue because they’re only hearing from one side. They have no clue what the sales of the products at issue are, or if the products are actually real versus counterfeit. The judges don’t even seem to require any proof that there were test buys to confirm that any one of the 869 different small businesses in this particular case were actually selling any infringing products at all.
So here’s what we did:
Seller hires us because we are the best in the world. There’s no other firm in the world that knows Amazon and litigation the way we do. Then we made a motion to the court and we said, “Your honor, you don’t have all the facts. This seller was not selling counterfeit products. This seller was not violating anybody’s intellectual property rights.” Even if it were, those sales amounted to less than $300 when this seller was doing over a million dollars every single month. We asked for an immediate hearing and we got an immediate hearing.
The judge then said, “I’m going to give the other side a full day to review the paperwork.” I personally argued to the judge, “In one more day, they’re going to lose another $34,000 in sales. In another day, you’re putting American jobs at risk.” The judge said, “No problem, 2:00 PM.” And at 2:00 PM, the issue was resolved. The temporary restraining order against our client was released. Our client was separate from the rest of the case.
Your honor, I know the wool has been pulled over your eyes in your words hundreds of times freezing thousands of small businesses. I want to let you know, we appreciate your ruling. We appreciate your openness in listening to the reality of Amazon sellers. Amazon sellers never want to be involved in counterfeit products. Amazon sellers want nothing more than to compete on a level playing field. I appreciate at least for this one seller, you putting a stop to the ridiculousness of freezing this entire business over absolutely baseless allegations.