We received multiple Rights Owner Violations across several ASINs involving different brands. The claimed rights owner supposedly owned the rights to approximately 50-60 brands, covering over 100 ASINs. We first noticed this issue in April 2024, and it has persisted since then. The alleged rights owner details are as follows:
{Moderator Edit personal data} - Due to email confidentiality, the email address provided was {Moderator Edit personal data}
We received over 20 such violations daily, labeled as "Counterfeit without Test Buy" or "Parallel Import." However, each violation included a trademark number, and {Moderator Edit personal data} did not own any of the trademarks. We contacted the affected brands, and they confirmed that they had not issued these violations, nor had their IPO representatives.
This raises the question of how Amazon accepted these violations initially. It was evident that these were fraudulent violations. We submitted our product source information to Amazon along with letters of authorization from the brands, leading to the removal of most violations. However, we continued to receive violations daily for over two months.
We discussed this issue with our Amazon Account Manager (AM) when we first received the fraudulent violations. After more than two months, Amazon confirmed that the Rights Owner (RO) violations were not genuine, stating:
"As discussed, I understand you needed assistance with the second review status. I am glad I was able to assist you. Your issue has been raised internally; kindly wait for the team to look into it and respond. We have received an update that the decision has been reversed due to an invalid RO complaint."
A week after receiving this message, any pending violations from the same rights owner were removed from our account health. We were informed by our account health manager that we had 7 pending violations out of a total of 121 from the same rights owner, which the second review team would investigate. Eventually, Amazon removed all the violations.
In April 2024, we received violations for some ASINs with different rights owner details, totaling over 30 violations across various brands. We had evidence to get them reinstated, but then received violations on the same ASINs from different rights owners. Clearly, one brand cannot have multiple rights owners, even through brand registry.
Initially, it was challenging to explain this to the Account Health Specialist, but it was resolved after speaking with our AM. The main point is that Amazon should not have accepted and sent these violations to us in the first place, indicating a flaw in their process, which others are exploiting – likely a competitor.
If anyone else has experienced something similar, I hope this information helps. If you have any questions, please let me know, and I will try to assist where possible.