Just over half of April, a number of Amazon sellers received trademark abuse notices, and the reason was because the common words in product descriptions involved infringement!
Who would have thought that the most common words for product descriptions would be applied for a registered trademark, and the application was successful!
OPERATION
In this round of Amazon cleaning, many sellers have been complained about trademark abuse because of the word "OPERATION", and sellers have said that they can't think of it at all.
The word "OPERATION" means operation, which is a necessary word in operation games or board games and toys, and is also a common word in the description of mechanical, kitchen, and home life products.
Now when searching for "OPERATION" on Amazon, there are still many listings that use this word, and almost all of the products ranked in the TOP10 are game products.
ACCORDING TO THE SEARCH INFORMATION OF THE U.S. TRADEMARK AND PATENT OFFICE (USPTO), AS EARLY AS 1966, THE AMERICAN TOY GIANT HASBRO, INC. HAS REGISTERED THE TRADEMARK "OPERATION", THE 28TH CLASS OF THE TRADEMARK CATEGORY, FOR GAME EQUIPMENT, AND THEN IN 2011, HASBRO, INC. EXPANDED THE "OPERATION" TRADEMARK CATEGORY TO THE 41ST AND THE 9TH CLASS.
Sellers of game products, household products and machinery products should be cautious about using the descriptor "OPERATION", and at present, Amazon uses the "OPERATION" trademark to check whether there is a risk of infringement in the product, sellers must be careful!
XM-L
"XM-L" is a size quantifier that often appears in the size description of lighting products, in addition, some sellers will also use this word to indicate the size of the product, common electrical products.
Searching for the word "XM-L" on Amazon, there are still more than 2000+ people using this size quantifier on the listing, and the TOP10 products are electronic and electrical.
According to the United States Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) search information, the word "XM-L" has been registered as a trademark by Cree LED in 2017, with the trademark number of 5294417 and the registered category of Class 9, which is mainly used for lamps, LEDs, etc. as the size description of lighting devices.
Cree LED has filed trademark rights protection almost every year in recent years, and on January 9 this year, the brand has already had two rights protection cases, case numbers: 24-cv-20081 and 24-cv-60062, and the trademark protected is the "XM-L" mentioned above.
Trademark rights protection is so frequent, but there are still many sellers who have a fluke mentality, sellers must be cautious on the shelves, and do not cause trouble for themselves because of temporary "benefits".
Material
The word "Material" means fabric, raw material, material, and the material of a product is often the most concerned by consumers, so the word "Material" has become a high-frequency word that cannot be avoided in all categories, and sellers hope to gain more trust from consumers by displaying the material of the product.
The word "Material" is commonly used in home textiles, maternal and child products, clothing, shoes and bags, jewelry and toys and machinery products.
Searching for the word "Material" on Amazon, the use of the trademark word on the listing is as high as 10W+ product links, if the trademark owner files a lawsuit, there will be a large number of sellers who will be "one pot end".
A search before the United States Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) found that there are many trademarks related to "Material", covering a wide range of trademark categories, such as Class 42, Class 35, Class 9, Class 25, etc., covering household utensils, kitchen knives, clothing, shoes and hats, etc.
In 2023, companies will apply for the registration of the "Material" trademark for tableware and kitchen utensils, and in March this year, a company successfully registered the "Material" trademark in the clothing, shoes and hats category.
It can be seen that kitchen supplies and clothing, shoes and hats are high-incidence categories that use this word, and it is recommended that sellers immediately check whether there is an infringement risk in their listing, and if there is an infringement risk, remove it from the shelves immediately!
Write at the end
There are many pitfalls of infringement, and sellers must pay attention to the issue of LSITING infringement when listing products, and some people with bad intentions first preemptively register trademarks, and then sue sellers for infringement on cross-border platforms to make profits.
As we all know, in the infringement complaint, the seller is very passive, once a brand or enterprise proposes to protect its rights, when the evidence is like this, the platform will remove the seller's product link, and may even freeze the account and close the store;
Sellers should note that when applying for a brand trademark, they should try to apply for all the categories within the scope of business, and conduct a trademark search before the product descriptor is put on the shelves to see whether the common word has been registered as a trademark, so as to avoid the risk of infringement as much as possible.
If you are unfortunately sued for infringement due to the use of common words in trademarks, do not panic, clarify the following issues before further processing:
(1) Clarify who the complainant is
(2) What rights of the other party have been infringed
Generally, the answers to these two questions can be found in the infringement email sent by Amazon, such as the contact information of the complainant, ASIN number, and the reason for the complaint.
If the above information is not available in the email, the seller can first contact the complainant and ask the complainant to inform him of the reason for the infringement and conduct friendly negotiation.
What should I do if I find specific information such as infringing links?
1. Stop the infringement and consider whether to settle/respond to the lawsuit
(1) Find out the infringing products and delete them, and stop the infringement in a timely manner
(2) Confirm the amount frozen and the authority of the store
(3) Analyze the situation of the case and consider whether to settle/respond to the lawsuit (if you believe that there is no infringement after analyzing the case, you can choose to entrust a lawyer to take measures to respond to the lawsuit)
2. Entrust a lawyer to settle the infringement
After determining that you want to settle, you can immediately entrust a lawyer to deal with it, and it can be resolved smoothly in about 1-2 months. The specific process of infringement settlement is as follows:
(1) Entrust a lawyer to understand the situation of the case and evaluate the settlement money
(2) Contact the plaintiff's lawyer to negotiate a settlement
(3) The two parties reach a preliminary agreement
(4) Wait for the plaintiff's lawyer to issue a settlement letter
(5) The defendant signs the settlement and pays the settlement money
(6) The plaintiff's lawyer submits a letter of withdrawal and contacts the platform to unfreeze the defendant's capital account
The above is the detailed sharing of trademark and infringement tutorials on common words and trademarks of products, sellers must pay attention to whether there are words registered as trademarks in the vocabulary on the shelves, and pay attention to infringement issues!