AMZ Sellers: Learn How a Copyright Complaint is Filed on Amazon.com
Amazon sellers, I’m Anthony, a paralegal at Rosenbaum, Famularo & Segall. Today I want to talk to you about copyrights and how complaints are filed on Amazon.
Unlike a trademark complaint or trademarks, copyright does not always have to be registered.
In case of a trademark for example, of a word, it’s very easy for somebody to register it with the USPTO, but for copyrightable images or pictures, it is very hard to register and that’s why a lot of copyrights are not actually registered.
How do you establish the basis for a copyright complaint if you don’t have registration?
On Amazon, this is usually done by something we refer to as ‘prior art’ or prior publication.
For example, if a complainant has a listing that was created in 2010. This means that if there’s no other listings that exist with the same product or copyrightable material before 2010, then this complainant could file complaints on similar products or copyrightable material that’s listed on Amazon after 2010.
This is the basis for a prior argument for the complaint. Additionally, copyright material doesn’t have to be exactly replicated or simulated for a complaint to be filed.
If the two products in question are very similar, then Amazon could make the determination that one is copying the other, hence the basis for an IP complaint.