What Amazon Sellers MUST Know – Trademark Cancellations & Oppositions to Fight Baseless Complaints
My name is David. I’m the managing attorney of our business law department. Today, I want to speak about trademark oppositions and cancellations.
We see a lot of trademark complaints come through on the Amazon platform. Simply put, they’re not always valid.
A lot of sellers think that because they own the rights to a trademark, because they registered with the USPTO, that that’s the end all, be all that they own the rights to the word mark, and they just blindly filed complaints. And often, Amazon actually helps them out.
Now, you cannot just file for a trademark and enforce it just because someone uses the words that you registered with United States Patent Trademark Office. Now that sounds a bit complicated, but simply put, you can oppose/cancel trademarks at times.
Opposing a trademark is when the trademark application has already been filed, and you oppose it before it’s actually registered.
A cancellation is after the trademark has been registered, you file a petition to cancel the trademark.