Winning Appeals For Baseless IP Complaints Against Amazon Sellers
How We Win Against Baseless Authorization Complaints Using the First Sales Doctrine
My name is Briana, I’m one of the newest paralegals at Rosenbaum, Famularo & Segall P.C. Today, I’m going to be talking to you about one of my most recent wins.
One of our clients, a seller on the Amazon platform, received a notification stating that they received a counterfeit claim for selling Coast products.
The first thing we did was contact the rights owner and let them know that our client sells authentic goods in the exact condition as sold by the manufacturer. We let them know that our client’s actions were protected under the First Sale Doctrine, and we needed a basis for their complaint.
The rights owner responded to us and asserted that they were not authorizing the sale of these goods on the Amazon platform.
We then had to let them know that authorization did not amount to infringement and that the complaint was still baseless.
Our client didn’t want to do too much back and forth, so they ended up deciding that the Coast products were not essential to their business and they removed them and closed the listings on their Amazon store. However, we ended up getting a retraction from the rights owner, and our client was reinstated to sell on Amazon again.
I am confident that if our client did not want to pull the products from their inventory on Amazon, we still would have been able to have a successful outcome. In the event that you’ve received baseless IP complaints and you don’t want to close your listings, feel free to reach out to use for a free consultation seven days a week.