Amazon catalogue error/glitch caused a copyright strike and it seems I might lose my account over this
So basically, I was selling some used Intel CPUs through Amazon FBA Italy, taking care to make sure I find the right product listing for the items, following Amazon directions and so forth, however one of the ASINS I was selling, seems to have had the brand name changed from Intel, to Epson.
The AISN in question is: B005LLBJ9Y
I made no changes, or updates of any kind to the listing, this was a product already in Amazon’s catalogue, and even checking the same ASIN in other countries shows it’s active in those places with the proper Intel brand name.
Now apparently, because the brand was mislabeled as Epson, Amazon is hitting me with a suspected copyright infringement for illegally using Intel’s logo, except the crazy part is, besides not having changed any of the details or images that were already in Amazon’s catalogue, It actually is proper use of the image, since the listing actually is for an Intel G630 Pentium Dual Core Processor.
I’m really not sure what to do here, and the copyright strike is telling me I could lose my account if I don’t do something soon, however my only options are to update the listing, which I can’t do, and seems to admit I was at fault when I wasn’t, say it wasn’t referencing the infringed brand in question, which is Intel, which would feel like a bad choice considering, or to be an authorized brand representative, which seems like an incredibly high bar to place on someone selling a handful of CPUs, and only because of the many sellers out there, I just happened to be unlucky enough to get hit with this.
I’ve already talked to support about this, and I don’t even care about the items themselves or that listing, just getting this strike removed from my account, but despite them totally agreeing with me I have nothing to do with this, I literally just had a rep basically tell me “yes” multiple times, when I was asking if “my only option is to wait for my account to get banned and to lose my business over a glitch I have no control over and nothing to do with”, even considering that technically the image was being properly used to begin with, since Epson does not make Pentium processors.
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So, first of all don’t panic, lots of sellers have 100s of Suspected Copyright Infringements and there are only a handful of people that have reported being suspended for them (and almost all of those were right around the time the suspected copyright system got added, none recently).
Now, that’s not to say it isn’t something you need to deal with but it’s not as urgent as the info shown makes it sound.
The key issue here is that the brand which is shown in the title, images, description, etc. HAS to match the “brand” field for the listing, or else an automated system flags it as suspected infringement.
Once a listing has been flagged in this way it gets completely erased from Amazon’s catalogue, which makes it extremely hard to deal with the issue.
DO NOT remove the ASIN from your inventory as this will make it near-impossible to resolve the problem and will leave you stuck with the infringement for 6 months.
Open a case with Amazon’s seller support in Italy under the heading “fix a product page”, you’ll find a form to fill in to request a change of details, select brand, request that the brand is changed to Intel.
As “evidence”, I assume you don’t have a product on hand to take photos of but a link to the product on the Intel website should be good enough.
Assuming that Epson is brand registered the case will most likely be passed on to them instead of being resolved directly. However it’s fairly likely they have someone actively maintaining their Amazon catalogue so it should be dealt with…
If Epson do not confirm the change though, there’s very little you can do.
You could try reporting listing abuse, from the Italian seller central, go to your account health page and you’ll see a “report abuse” link near the top of the page, one of the option is to report a change of brand name.
Amazon don’t work on logic, just facts. This causes problems when other sellers have given them the wrong facts to work with. “Intel” is not owned by “Epson”, that listing has “Epson” as the brand (and hence rights holder for the product) so “Intel” should not appear on the page at all.
