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In recent years, as the competition in the cross-border e-commerce industry has become increasingly fierce, Chinese sellers going overseas have also paid more and more attention to product innovation and brand building to enhance their competitiveness and market position in overseas markets. On Amazon, an e-commerce platform that has always emphasized "brand", trademark registration has become the first barrier for cross-border sellers to enter the market. However, there are always unexpected events on the platform and sellers have their own intentions. On the issue of brand trademarks, some unexpected actions of Amazon always seem to catch sellers off guard. It is learned that recently, according to industry insiders, the commonly used industry word "Durable" has been registered as a trademark, and using it on Amazon product pages may cause infringement. It is understood that since March 30, several North American sellers’ product links have been found to be trademark abuse due to the use of “Durable” and have received performance notification emails from Amazon. After verification, it was found that "Durable" has indeed been registered as a related word trademark in multiple product categories such as home, beauty, stationery, etc. The earliest record of registration was submitted in 1992, and the most recent registration was completed in February 2024. According to the USPTO, the most widely involved are the 11 categories of trademarks registered in October 2009, namely 018, 020, 021, 024, 026, 005, 006, 008, 016, 003, and 009. The protected goods include leather goods, furniture, kitchenware, cloth sheets, buttons and zippers, pharmaceuticals, metal materials, manual tools, office supplies, daily chemicals, and scientific instruments. This means that if a seller sells related products in the United States and uses "Durable" as a descriptive word, it may constitute infringement. Because there have been cases of malicious trademark registration in the past, after Amazon judged multiple sellers' product links as "trademark abuse", some sellers also suspected that their products were the subject of malicious complaints from their peers. But more sellers believe that this may be the result of Amazon's AI scanning : "The trademark was registered a long time ago, and the complaint would have been made long ago. How could it wait until now? It feels more like it was scanned by Amazon's system." It is worth mentioning that the products that are currently judged as "trademark abuse" due to the use of "Durable" are mostly in the home category . According to feedback from sellers in other categories, their products also use the common word "Durable", but they have not received performance notification emails, and there are no abnormalities in the links. Therefore, sellers in other categories do not need to worry too much for the time being. However, we also learned that this is not the first time that Amazon sellers’ links have been affected due to common words being trademarked. It is learned that in addition to "Durable", common words such as 100%, ideal, and one have also been registered as trademarks. In January 2023, several sellers in the industry used the common word "one" on their product detail pages, and their links were judged by Amazon as trademark abuse and even removed. At that time, several sellers successfully avoided the risk by changing keywords (such as changing "one" to "1", etc.), and not only did the links return to normal, but the performance also disappeared. Therefore, in response to the infringement of the commonly used word "Durable", some sellers have proposed similar solutions: "Durable" means "durable, long-lasting", and is often used on Amazon to describe the selling points of many products. In order to avoid the risk of Amazon's machine scanning of trademarks, relevant sellers can replace "Durable" with synonyms, such as Sturdy, Reliable, Persistent, etc. According to feedback from sellers, most of the products currently affected by this incident are home furnishing products. However, since Amazon often adopts the approach of "remove from the shelves first, then investigate" when it comes to infringement issues, some sellers who use "Durable" as product descriptions, titles, or even pictures have begun to modify their listings overnight. In fact, according to Section 33b of the Lanham Act, some professionals have analyzed that even if a commonly used word is successfully registered, the scope of protection is very small. The Trademark Office will require the holder to give up most of the rights and cannot prohibit others from legitimately using the name. Therefore, from a legal perspective, using common words to reasonably describe products is unlikely to constitute infringement. If Amazon determines that links using common words are "trademark abuse", it is not difficult for the relevant sellers to file a complaint. However, in order to avoid affecting product sales due to link performance issues, sellers are reminded to pay attention to relevant changes in a timely manner. If you have the latest relevant news, you can also share it in the comment area~
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