Breaking news! A Chinese seller won the lawsuit against for infringement, and the balance of 30 million yuan in his account was unfrozen!

Nowadays, sellers seem to be at the bottom of the cross-border e-commerce food chain. Freight forwarders, Amazon, VAT, etc. can all cut a handful of leeks. Sellers are miserable, but they don’t know how to resist...

However, this year, a successful infringement lawsuit against a Chinese seller has greatly encouraged sellers doing cross-border business.

According to the latest reports, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York supported cross-border e-commerce sellers, ruled that the plaintiff's preservation measures were inappropriate, and agreed to unblock the defendant's Paypal account worth more than US$5 million that was frozen due to pre-trial property preservation in an intellectual property infringement lawsuit .

The seller is currently filing a lawsuit for compensation for economic losses caused by the plaintiff's abuse of pre-trial preservation measures.

In this case, the plaintiff is Mattel, also known as Mattel, the world's largest toy company. Mattel's main brands include the most popular and best-selling fashion doll Barbie®.  

In this case, the Chinese seller sold toy dolls named "Barbie" that infringed on the pictures and were sold from October to November 2020.

Mattel sued the seller in December 2020 for counterfeiting, trademark infringement, and infringement of the copyright of the Barbie trademark and Barbie image. In addition, at the same time as filing the lawsuit, Mattel applied for a temporary injunction ("TRO") to freeze the funds in the defendant's PayPal account.

As a result, all 11 PayPal accounts of the seller were frozen, with a total amount of more than 5 million US dollars. The defendant seller also actively responded and argued with reason.

It is understood that the seller sold the infringing products for a total of $131,000, with a profit of only $13,000 , which is far from the $2 million that Mattel wants to claim and the $5 million that has been frozen. It should be noted that according to the US Trademark Law, the defendant's behavior constitutes intentional infringement of trademark rights, and the statutory compensation amount can be up to $2 million.

After a round of defense, the seller's lawyer convinced the judge, and the final verdict showed that the judge only supported the requirement that the seller maintain a balance of no less than $13,000 in his PayPal account. (That is, the judge did not agree with Mattel freezing the seller's $5 million PayPal account balance, but only required that the account balance be no less than $13,000, and the rest of the money could be freely used.)

The judgment results of the above cases have greatly encouraged Chinese sellers. After all, in many infringement cases, most Chinese sellers were forced to pay high compensation in exchange for a settlement.

There are many law firms with ulterior motives that take advantage of the fact that Chinese sellers do not understand local laws and regulations and try to make a big deal out of a small matter, and launch a series of actions such as high-value claims and freezing accounts against them!

As a cross-border seller, the first thing you must do when selling business is to comply with local laws and regulations . Do not do anything illegal for the sake of performance, otherwise you will inevitably suffer the consequences.

Therefore, registering a brand and complying with copyright regulations are the only way to develop overseas business. However, if you encounter malicious claims for high amounts, don't panic, first find a reliable legal work unit to understand the situation.