Amazon hits copyright hooligans hard? The official did a great thing!

Yesterday, Amazon announced that it had recently targeted three illegal gangs that used false copyright information to file claims and extort money from third-party sellers on the Amazon platform, forcing tens of thousands of listings to be removed from the shelves. Currently, all three gangs have been controlled and prosecuted!

According to official information, these illegal gangs will use fake, one-time websites and grab product images from Amazon stores as false evidence to register Brand Registry. Then they will claim that third-party sellers have infringed their copyrights and use platform rules to temporarily remove these products.

Other media outlets have revealed more explosive information than Amazon's official account. The three copyright hooligans who were sued are "Vivcic", "Sidesk" and "Dhuog". The most serious one is "Sidesk". Before being shut down by Amazon, this account submitted about 3,850 false infringement complaints , affecting thousands of sellers. Moreover, this trademark was actually registered by Shenzhen Huanyi in the early years, and it was one of the 15,000 trademarks cancelled by the United States when Huanyi exploded.

This trademark scandal was widely known in the cross-border circle. At that time, some sellers came to Huanyi to ask for a solution, but the office of Huanyi was deserted. Most sellers could only suffer in silence.

Now it is clear that the trademarks registered by Huanyi are indeed problematic. They registered them to be copyright hooligans, so the procedures were definitely not formal. Fortunately, the Trademark Office revoked all of them at that time. If Sidesk was missed, more than 3,000 illegal complaints could be made. If all 15,000 were released, it would be terrible.

Being entangled by copyright trolls is a common problem in the Amazon circle. Not to mention the sellers who have not registered copyrights and filed records, even if they are well-filed, they will suffer a lot if they are entangled by copyright trolls. Most sellers will choose to pay money to settle the matter, and the first priority is to resume normal sales of products as soon as possible. If the seller has no protection measures, he may have to exit the market sadly once he is entangled. Few sellers go back to investigate whether there is really infringement, or whether there is a team specializing in copyright extortion behind the scenes. Although the falsely accused sellers can restore the products after Amazon's review, the removal period will still cause irreparable losses to the affected third-party sellers.

Faced with this situation, Amazon's Counterfeit Crime Unit (ACCU, yes, the official team that catches counterfeit products in China) investigated and targeted the copyright hooligan group, and joined forces with law enforcement agencies to control the illegal gang. It filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. This is the first time that ACCU has punished this type of copyright hooligan criminal.

In addition, Amazon has added a detection mechanism for this situation. When such an attempt at abuse is detected, the system will not immediately remove the product that is reported to be infringing, but will first contact the seller for confirmation. When the evidence is conclusive, the illegal copyright complaint will be withdrawn and the account used by the illegal gang to commit copyright fraud will be closed. In reality, Amazon cracks down on copyright hooligans, and at the same time, tries to eliminate false copyright lawsuits in algorithms. These two moves by Amazon can definitely greatly reduce the chaos of copyright complaints on the platform, and sellers with or without copyright protection can benefit. Branding and refinement are now the main trends of Amazon. Sellers who want to learn about related gameplay can chat with me privately to receive a refined operation skills package.