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Dear All,
Hope everyone is keeping well and safe. Thanks in advance.
Under a personal company my friend found a great Amazon lightning deal.
He purchased around 200 units of this as a result. He purchased directly from the brand owner who is selling on the listing. This was done under his personal name. The brand owner was the only person on the listing.
He then sold the stock to my company and invoiced us for it. We then did the following:
1) We sold around 90 to a wholesale customer who then came back to us two weeks later stating Amazon is not allowing them to sell it as the product is counterfeit, we assured them it is not and told them they are welcome to get them authenticated, and after sometime they were then allowed to sell on Amazon. However, it appears they are not selling it anymore, I believe it is because the brand owner has reached out to them and stopped them. Can the company who bought from us do anything about this or put a claim on us? We never stated to them that if they cannot sell it on Amazon they will get their money back or anything like that.
2) We also started selling on Amazon ourselves, and then we received a strong email from the brand owner stating:
"
First and Final Warning! After that, our attorney will take legal action against you and will take you to the court.
Your Company is using our trademarks to sell products on the Amazon marketplace, in violation of multiple international and national criminal laws, as well as civil laws regarding trademark infringement and unfair competition.
Our company is the only distributors and owners of the brand. We never granted permission to your company to sell our branded products nor have we sold you inventory for resale.
This will serve you Legal Notice to Cease and Desist all further actions described above, including any mention of our Products on your Listings on any Marketplace, websites or marketing efforts.
You are hereby instructed to comply with this letter immediately or face legal sanctions under applicable International (International Bureau of WIPO located in Geneva, Switzerland), Federal and State law.
We have already placed 28 orders from you, Failure to remove your counterfeit product offer from our ASIN Listing on Amazon within 24 hours will force us to report this violation to the Amazon seller performance team. This is licensed products to Amazon.com as well, Amazon seller performance team will take such violations seriously, possibly resulting in the removal of your selling privileges on Amazon.com."
Please advise where we stand on this situation, do they have any claim against us?
I have checked and their trademark is registered in the UK. However, to my knowledge this does NOT mean we cannot sell it, if we are selling a genuine product. This potentially could fall more under retail arbitrage, however, we purchased of someone who did that, which is completely above board.
Hence, please advise where we stand on selling on Amazon and whether we should respond back to them or not, I have not emailed back.
3) In addition, where do we stand on selling via other avenues like wholesale forums, liquidation sites, auctions etc?
In addition, if we go via these avenues, if these customers then try and sell on Amazon and have the same experience as us from the brand owner, can the customers come and put a claim on us regarding this?
4) In addition, we have a relationship with some online retailers to supply them some products, we were thinking of offering this product on to them, if they accept and purchase from us. Can the brand owner complain about the online retailer and try and get them to stop selling this?
5) It is also worth noting, hundreds of people sell this same product on eBay with no issue, and a lot of them are personal accounts, I am certain the brand owner has not given permission to all these sellers."
