Intellectual property for Rights Owner

Amazon is dedicated to ensuring that products on its marketplaces do not violate or infringe a Rights Owner's intellectual property (IP) rights. Rights Owners can report infringing content they find on Amazon and share answers to frequently asked questions on how Amazon handles infringement complaints. A Rights Owner includes any person (such as a brand, a seller, a customer or any third party) who legitimately owns intellectual property rights for the product in question.

To learn more about intellectual property rights, please visit your local intellectual property office. Additionally, this page will review examples of trademark, copyright, and patents.

If you are a Rights Owner with a registered trademark, you may be eligible to enroll your brand in the Amazon Brand Registry. Amazon Brand Registry provides access to powerful tools including proprietary text and image search, predictive automation based on your reports of suspected intellectual property rights violations, and increased authority over product listings with your brand name.

To learn more and start the enrolment process, click here.

To submit a notice of IP infringement, you must be the Rights Owner who owns the IP being reported or an agent with permission from the Rights Owner to submit notices on his or her behalf. Do not forget to provide your contact details (name, address, phone number, email address, secondary contact details) when you report infringement.

If your brand is enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, you can submit a report via the Report a Violation (RAV) tool or through our Report Infringement form. Rights Owners who do not have a brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry can submit via the Report Infringement form. In addition, it is a requirement that a notice submitter be logged into an Amazon account in order to use the Report Infringement form or Brand Registry's RAV tool. For India marketplace, the Grievance Officer can also be contacted via email to report infringement.

You can submit a trademark, copyright, patent, or other IP claim.

You should include the following information in your report:

• Specific identification of the IP you believe is infringed: trademark, copyright, or patent registration number; written description of or link to copyrighted work; etc. Identifying the specific ASIN/listing which is the subject matter of violation would be very useful.
• Nature of infringement (whether infringement occurs on the physical product, physical product packaging, image on the product detail page, or text on the product detail page).
  Note: A product detail page allows customers to view a specific product available on Amazon with information common to all sellers' offers for that product, such as the product's title, brand, images, bullet points, descriptions, variations (such as size or colour) and customer reviews. It can include one or more offers from both third-party sellers or Amazon.
• List of infringing products (either Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) or URLs for the product detail page of the specified product). If you believe that only a subset of sellers are infringing, and you are not accusing the entire product detail page, click the checkbox next to the name of each seller you are reporting in the Report Infringement form or RAV.
• Any additional information that will help Amazon in processing your complaint (such as order IDs for any test buys on the products you are reporting).
• Your contact details (name, address, phone number, email address, and secondary contact details that we can share with affected sellers).

Infringement reporting should not be used as a mechanism to restrict other sellers listing the same product, selling a genuine product or thwart competition.

Amazon does not enforce distribution channel control reports or check for a seller’s authorization or ability to sell a brand’s products through the infringement form. If you report counterfeit on the basis that a seller is not authorized by you to sell or, you have not allowed other sellers to sell your product, it may not constitute an infringement complaint.

If you are reporting counterfeit offers mapped to your ASIN, make sure the ASIN is branded with your brand name or logo and that is clearly visible to customers on Amazon Detail Page image(s). If you are reporting infringement of your brand name on other products not manufactured by you, explain how the ASIN is misusing your rights.

Do not submit more than one type of IP violation per notice. In order to ensure quality and quick resolution of your notices, we will only process the specific complaint type you have chosen in the Report Infringement form or RAV (such as, patent, trademark, or copyright). The following are examples of submissions that contain more than one complaint type within a notice:

• Selecting trademark infringement and discussing copyright issues in the submission. The notice will be processed as a trademark complaint only. If you want to report infringement of a trade mark and a copyright, file separate notices.
• Indicating two trademark numbers in one notice, as only the first trade mark number will be considered for that notice. If you want to report infringement of separate trad emarks, file separate notices.

Do not submit retractions of complaints through the Report Infringement form or Brand Registry. A seller may reach out to you requesting a retraction, and if relevant, you can notify Amazon through the appropriate email queue (as provided by the seller ).

Trademark

A trademark is a word, symbol, or design (such as a stylized brand name or logo) that a company uses to identify its goods or services and to distinguish them from other companies' goods and services. Generally, trademark laws exist to prevent customer confusion about the source of goods or services.

Example: Trademarks are often displayed on Amazon’s product detail pages in the form of product and brand names listed on a product detail page. For example, the “Pinzon” by Amazon” trademark appears above the product title in the brand value portion of the product detail page shown below

Copyright

A copyright protects original works of authorship, such as videos, movies, songs, books, musicals, video games, paintings, etc. Generally, copyright law is meant to incentivize the creation of original works of authorship for the benefit of the public. To receive copyright protection, a work of authorship must be created by an author and must have some amount of creativity. If you are the author of an original work, then you typically own the copyright in that work.

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A copyright owner usually protects the copyrighted material by registering the material with a country-specific copyright office (for example, US Copyright Office). However, a Rights Owner does not necessarily need a formal copyright registration to receive protection. You can generally use your own copyrighted images on product detail pages to sell a product; however, you should not take images from other sources and add them to product detail pages without the Rights Owner's permission

Example: The owner of the Pinzon brand took the photos of the towels shown below and owns the copyright of the sheets images. If a seller were to copy these images to sell their product on another product detail page, that seller could be violating the Rights Owner's copyright of the sheets images.

Patent

A patent is a form of legal protection for inventions. An issued patent grants its owner the right to exclude others from making, using, offering to sell or selling the invention for a fixed number of years.

Utility patents, the most common kind of patent, can be granted for the following:

• A new machine
• Article of manufacture
• Composition of matter, process, or improvement on both matter and process
• Protects the structure and functions of a product (rather than how it looks)

A utility patent is different from a trademark in that it protects an invention (such as a new machine) rather than a word or logo used to identify the source of the product. A utility patent is different from a copyright in that it does not protect the expressive content of a creative work like a book or a picture, but instead protects a specific invention, such as a new method of printing books or a new type of camera.

Design patents are granted for the unique look of a product, but do not cover the functions of a product. In the United States, design patent numbers begin with the letter "D."

A Rights Owner can report an ASIN, seller, or product detail page content when submitting an IP infringement notice. Note that in India, court order may be required to enable takedown in certain cases where the rights ownership is not clear. The following are the different types of infringement notices:

A. Trademark Infringement

ASIN-Level Infringement: If a product or product packaging available on Amazon bears your trademark but you do not make that product, then you may report the entire ASIN, or entire product detail page, for trademark infringement.

Seller-Level Infringement: If you believe a particular offer from a Seller is listing a product that infringes your trademark, then you may report that offer as infringing. However, expect the product detail page and ASIN to remain live if you report an offer. When you report an offer, and not an entire ASIN, you are only referring to the offer for infringement, not the entire ASIN or product detail page. It is also helpful to provide a test buy with a valid Order ID to support your report.

Product detail page Infringement: If your trademark is being used on the product detail page, but the product being sold is not your product, you may report use of the trademark on the product detail page as infringing.

B. Copyright Infringement

ASIN-Level Infringement: If a product or its packaging is using your copyrighted work, such as text or images, without your permission, then you may report the entire ASIN for copyright infringement.In India, we may take down a reported ASIN for up to 21 days (without a court order) upon receiving notice of infringement from the rights owner.

Seller-Level Infringement: If you believe a particular offer from a Seller listing a product that infringes your copyright, then you may report that offer as infringing. However, expect the product detail page and ASIN to remain live if you report an offer. When you report an offer, and not an entire ASIN, you are only referring to the offer for infringement, not the entire ASIN or product detail page. It is also helpful to provide a test buy with a valid Order ID to support your report.

Image or Text Infringement: If your copyrighted image is used on a product detail page without your permission, then you may report the image as infringing. However, expect the product detail page and ASIN to remain live if you report an image or text. When you report an image or text, and not an entire ASIN, you are only referring to the image or text for infringement, not the entire ASIN or product detail page.

Patent Infringement

Design: If an ASIN or product on Amazon is infringing your design patent, then you may report the entire ASIN. If we accept your report, we will remove the ASIN.

Utility: If an ASIN or product on Amazon is infringing your utility patent, then you may report the entire ASIN. It is helpful to provide a court order or an International Trade Commission order finding infringement of the reported patent with your notice.

India does not have a distinction between design patents and utility patents. Evaluation of patent infringement may require a court order.

Exclusive Distribution, Direct Selling and Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Agreements: Amazon respects a manufacturer's right to enter into exclusive distribution agreements for its products. However, violations of such agreements do not constitute intellectual property rights infringement. As the enforcement of these agreements is a matter between the manufacturer and the resellers, Amazon does not assist in this type of enforcement activity. , unless specifically required under local law to do so.

Compatibility: Amazon does not enforce notices seeking to remove true statements indicating compatibility with trademarked products. If a product detail page clearly and truthfully states the product being sold on that page is compatible with a trademarked product, Amazon will not take action on a notice directed to the use of the trademarked term.

Parallel Import: Amazon accepts notices directed to parallel import claims in certain kinds of infringement (such as copyright) in India.

If you are a brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, use the Report a Violation tool.

If your brand is not enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, then use our public-facing Report Infringement form.

If a seller's offers are infringing on your intellectual property or a product sold on Amazon is infringing your intellectual property, you can use RAV or the Report Infringement form to report one of the following:

1. All sellers listing on the ASIN (product)
2. Specific sellers' offers

Once you have determined what ASINs to report, the seller IDs are automatically populated in our systems by the Report Infringement form and RAV.

Both RAV and the Report Infringement form will auto-populate a list of sellers that are listing an ASIN or product detail page once you provide either an ASIN or URL. Select either ALL sellers or the Specific sellers option when submitting your report of intellectual property infringement.

You will receive a confirmation message that we are reviewing your notice. We will send you a follow up message once your notice has been processed.

If your notice is valid, we will inform the responsible sellers about your claim and share your secondary contact information with them should they have any follow-up questions.

If your notice of infringement is accepted, we will remove the content you reported and take appropriate action against the responsible sellers. However, specific actions are confidential.

If your notice of infringement is rejected, we will not remove the content you reported and the seller will not be actioned.You will receive a notification with the reason for rejection of your notice.