Initial steps for IP infringement Performance Notifications

When you receive a brand owner / right’s owner / ip infringement type of Performance Notification from Amazon there are a few things to ascertain immediately.

Ask yourself:

1. Is it legitimate?
2. Is it likely to be something akin to patent bullying?
3. Is it likely a competitor trying to simply knock you off the listing?
4. Is it likely a competitor wanting to cause damage to your account?
5. How good are your invoices?
6. Do you have authorization to sell the brand / product?

You want to take action as soon as you receive any notification like this.  Keep in mind, you actions might vary slightly depending upon which of the 6 areas or others you might find yourself tackling.

Amazon needs a response regardless of the reasons above.  Don’t ignore these types of Performance Notifications or ANY and hope they’ll go away.

Many sellers won’t take any action at all and completely ignore the complaint if it comes through Buyer Messaging instead of directly from Amazon. Rarely is that the right course of action.

When you receive the first notification of infringement of some kind, generally the best course of action is to find the items that are identified and do a removal of all of those products that are in your inventory. Wait long enough for those products to be removed perhaps fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour. Then you want to follow up by deleting those items from your inventory.

Chances are fairly good you will also need to find your receipts for the product that you had purchased and listed. After you have done these things the next step that you will want to accomplish is to contact the rights owner.

Contact them at the email address provided to you by Amazon for the rights owner email address on record. Then if you find that rights owner is not legitimate you have to begin to determine what your next steps are.

You will want to apologize and explain that you have removed all of your items and come into compliance you understand that you were not authorized to sell this product.  You might mention that if it all possible you would like to become authorized, but otherwise you have removed all the inventory and will no longer sell that product again if authorization is not possible.

You would want to follow up by asking them to confirm what you have done by giving them your store name and the link to the listing so they can confirm that you are no longer on the listing.  Finally, you will want to ask them to contact Amazon on your behalf to remove the complaint and CC you when they do so.

You will want to document all of these steps you have taken and all of the times you have attempted to reach the rights owner.  If you cannot reach the rights owner or you can’t get them to agree to removal, you will want to be able to provide documentation to Amazon of your intent to comply.

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