The United States has a strong awareness of intellectual property protection, and there are many law firms in the United States, such as GBC, EPS, keith, HSP, SMG and so on.
The names of these American law firms are "household names" in China's cross-border circles, especially selling well. Especially the first GBC law firm, which has a great reputation, has been responsible for many big infringement cases.
At present, there is a popular saying in cross-border circles in China: "If you are not afraid of the store, you are afraid of receiving a complaint letter from GBC", which shows its popularity and influence.
Why are domestic sellers so familiar with these American law firms?
Because there are many cross-border infringement cases represented by them, and the means are "tough", more importantly, some law firms even have a "fishing law enforcement" situation, first pretending to be customers to buy products, and then actively launching infringement complaints on Amazon platform. This situation is not encountered by domestic sellers once or twice.
Just like professional counterfeiters, these law firms will look for infringement in Amazon. They will collect information about these infringers and then submit a lawyer's letter to the federal court. As long as Amazon receives a lawyer's letter, it will freeze the store funds.
Amazon does not participate in this kind of thing, watching the fire from the other side. Amazon's attitude is very clear, as long as the infringer and the right holder reach a settlement, Amazon will unfreeze the store funds.
Usually it is useless for the seller to send an email to the law firm himself, because the seller basically doesn't understand American law and English and can't come forward as a lawyer to solve the problem.
So how to solve this problem?
1. settlement: to find a service provider, you only need to pay them the lawyer's fee, and don't worry about other issues. They will have their own channels to contact the opposite law firm to help you discuss the amount of settlement money;
Note: (It is best to choose a reliable service provider to do it. Some of them give you a wrong exit, and you think it has been solved. Finally, you waited for a long time before the funds were unfrozen, only to find that it was a fake withdrawal, and you might not be there if you wanted to handle it. )
2. Respond to the lawsuit: If you feel that you have no infringement and have a lot of money in your pocket, touch each other. Of course, this requires a lot of legal fees, just like domestic litigation, and it may take several rounds of negotiations. Fortunately, if you lose the lawsuit, the money may be gone;
Note: (If you plan to respond to the lawsuit, you need to consider whether you have enough RMB in your pocket, and you can't go against people when your mind is hot. )
So how is the settlement money calculated?
The settlement fund generally consists of two parts: (1) the amount of the infringing product issued; (two) the frozen funds of the store;
If the amount of infringing products is relatively large, the amount of infringing products shall be the settlement amount; If there are many frozen funds, the final settlement will be charged according to the frozen funds of the store; (Someone will definitely ask,' My products have not been distributed, so why should I settle according to the frozen funds of the store?' You have no reason to do this. After all, the other party is a rogue law firm, and people just have the evidence of your infringement, otherwise others will not sue you. )
In any case, we should try to avoid this situation in normal operation, so as not to bring a lot of unnecessary trouble.
Always have a sense of property rights protection, usually browse Amazon products and foreign websites, keep the sensitivity of products, and avoid those products with infringement risks.