The case of US marketplace retailer Brushes4Less, whose marketplace shop was suspended by Amazon in July, is currently causing a stir. Allegedly, one of the vendor’s products was infringing on the rights of another company. The law firm, from which Amazon had received the complaint, however, does not exist.
The fake allegations raised against Brushes4Less do not appear to be the only such case at Amazon. The online shipping giant has already been criticised several times for not adequately examining and investigating reports of alleged IP violations. The US based CNBC reports of a large number of market traders who have also been the victim of such false copyright infringement complaints.
In another case last year, a number of dealers selling popular Samsung devices on Amazon’s Marketplace were blocked due to false allegations just before the so-called Black Friday, one of the highest-selling days in the USA. Experts believe that often the originators of such fake allegations are competing traders who are targeting popular, high selling products of their competitors in order to harm their business.
“Amazon does little to vet the complaints to make sure they are legitimate, and typically they refer you to the accusing party for any info or resolution,” explains Chris McCabe, a former Amazon employee, to CNBC. “If Amazon continues to process brand or buyer complaints as they are now, suspended accounts will continue to spike. It undermines faith in the marketplace.”
At the same time, Amazon is under pressure to do more in the fight against counterfeit goods being sold on its platform. The case of shoe manufacturer Birkenstock, who withdrew from Amazon because of the many counterfeits that were sold there, was widely discussed in the media (we reported). Meanwhile Amazon has announced that they will suspend and block reported counterfeiting operations more quickly and introduce a new trademark register in the US in order to intensify cooperation with well-known holders of copyrights (we reported).
In the case of Brushes4Less, Amazon also merely referred the trader to the plaintiff; however, the contact details for the alleged law firm turned out to be incorrect and the firm’s website, which is no longer accessible, was quickly discovered to be fake. A simple picture search on the internet showed, for example, that photographs of a law firm in Missouri had been stolen and used on the fake site. “Just five minutes of detective work would have found this website is a fraud,” explained the owner of Brushes4Less to CNBC. “But Amazon doesn’t seem to want to do any of that.”
In the end, it took the owner approximately two months to reactivate his Marketplace store and clear the allegations with Amazon. In that time, the company lost around 170,000 euros in sales due to the false charges.
