Intellectual property complaints; Amazon sellers fear them, and rightly so. Amazon even has instructions on how to report violators, so clearly they take it seriously. Commit even one IP violation, and a seller could see their account banned for life.
Two main sides exist to this issue:
- an IP owner’s right to enjoy all the rights over their intellectual property;
- a seller’s right to sell products under US federal laws such as First Sale Doctrine and the Lanham Act.
In no way does federal law give a seller an absolute right to sell anything they want, nor does federal law give an IP holder absolute control over sale and distribution. The rights of both sellers and IP holders lies somewhere in between. Here’s how to avoid or minimize intellectual property complaints. Amazon, sellers, and customers will all appreciate it.
Legit sourcing
Use legit sources for your inventory; ideally, authorized brand distributors. Get a list of distributors directly from the brand, or even a letter of authorization from the brand (warning: LOA’s are extremely rare). In many cases, brands provide neither, so vet the distributor as best you can. Search them on Google, make sure they have a website, physical address, published phone number, legitimate email addresses (no gmail.com or yahoo.com). Use common sense; if they seem suspicious, they probably are.
For arbitrage, authorized distributors may not be an option, so stick with well known and big box retailers. Buying inventory from eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, OfferUp, flea markets, thrift stores or a local corner store is risky. Avoid Alibaba for arbitrage/wholesale! Use them only for private label.
Intellectual property complaints Amazon: tools
My account health looks like this:
I attribute this to the following tools:
- IP Alert (click for $30 off a lifetime license)
- Keepa
- Common sense
I installed IP Alert as a Chrome extension that automatically checks the brand against an extremely accurate database. If the brand has a history of IP complaints, it will display a warning.
Pretty simple: I see this warning, I pass.
With Keepa, I look at the charts. If the seller chart shows a sudden drop off in sellers, but the sales ranks stays the same or improves, that’s a pretty good sign to stay way. A bigger red flag is if the sellers drop to 1 or 2.
Speaking of 1 or 2 sellers, I use common sense. 1 or 2 sellers typically indicate the sellers are the brand owner and/or strictly authorized sellers.