Amazon sues sellers for sending false takedown requests to rivals

There have been three lawsuits filed against groups that Amazon has alleged are abusing its takedown system by filing thousands of illegitimate copyright complaints against other products in a bid to get people to purchase their merchandise instead of others. An announcement made by the company on Thursday said that the lawsuits are part of a "new offensive against bad actors.".

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The lawsuits stated that the alleged bad actors did not just file fake complaints and then wait to see if they worked before filing any further lawsuits. It is also claimed that the parties also created fake, disposable websites with images of products that were scraped from Amazon's website and used them as evidence that they were actually the legitimate owners of the copyrights. "A sort of dark humor can be seen here - it takes a certain level of audacity to literally copy an image for the purpose of presenting it as evidence that the person from whom you copied it is stealing from you."

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A defendant under the name "Sidesk" has been accused by Amazon of taking matters a step further, filing a lawsuit under the same name. It is alleged in the complaint that it created a "fraudulent" trademark application in order to be allowed to join Amazon Brand Registry - which enables companies to monitor and manage fraudulent listing scans that are copied from their products on Amazon. There is a claim by Amazon that the US Patent and Trademark Office had canceled the trademark application but Sidesk used it in spite of it.

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Sidesk takes the rabbit hole to an even deeper level with its features. This trademark application was allegedly filed by a company known as Shenzhen Huanyee Intellectual Property Co., Ltd., a company that has been sanctioned by the Patent and Trademark Office for “filing over 15,800 trademark applications with false, fictitious, or fraudulent domicile information and/or credentials,” as outlined in the lawsuit.

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Aside from being the worst offender when it comes to filing takedown requests, according to Amazon's lawsuits, Sidesk also had the highest number of requests with around 3,850. There are also two others, Dhuog and Vivcic, who allegedly filed 229 and 59 complaints, respectively, in the course of a few months. According to the lawsuits, they were sometimes successful in their endeavors. “Defendants' scheme did work in a few instances, and some products listed on the Amazon Store were temporarily removed from the store as a result of Defendants' invalid complaints being taken down as a result of their scheme."

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As you may already know, Amazon's Digital Millennium Copyright Act system (or DMCA for short) has legitimate uses - for instance, if someone tried to sell a shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, Disney would have the legal right to take it down as it owns the copyright to the character (at least for now). There is no doubt that walking the line between making it easy for legitimate claimants to get items taken down while creating a system that can be abused by bad actors, can be a difficult task, as these cases demonstrate. There are several robust protections in place at Amazon to detect and stop bad actors from attempting to submit fake and abusive notices of infringement, but there is no such thing as being perfect.

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There are other factors at play here as well, and it isn't just a problem with Amazon. In the past, YouTubers have complained about how the site’s copyright-claiming system makes it easy for companies and scammers to file illegitimate claims with the intention of extorting creators or encroaching on their ad revenue, often (but not always) without any real consequences. The suit filed by Amazon may act as a deterrent for people looking to abuse the company's systems if they are successful in their lawsuits.