Amazon Takes On Three Shady Retailers, Suing Them For Abusing The DMCA Process
DMCA abuse is never going to go away. Plenty of IP protection firms send out unvetted takedown notices in bulk, resulting in the targeting of non-infringers by takedown demands. To maintain their safe harbor protections, entities hosting third-party content tend to side with those sending the notices. For platforms hosting millions or billions of uploads, not a whole lot of vetting happens on the receiving end either.
Then there's the deliberate abuse of the DMCA process. A lot of this abuse is linked to sketch reputation management" firms. Clients, who want embarrassing information about them erased from search listings and the internet beyond, pay these companies to do their dirty SEO work for them.
One of many shady tools in the chest is the bogus DMCA notice issued under the false claim that a negative article is actually copyright infringement. It works this way. The offending article is copy-pasted into a new" article at a news-ish sounding site. Said article is then backdated to appear to have been published before the article being targeted. A DMCA notice is issued, citing this bogus publication date. A few clicks later and the non-infringing article is taken down or delisted, resulting in a slightly cleaner reputation.
The same thing is going on at Amazon, but it appears to be shady merchants hoping to eliminate their competition, as Mitchell Clark reports for The Verge.
Amazon has filed three lawsuits against groups that it claims were abusing its takedown system by filing thousands of illegitimate copyright complaints against other products in a bid to get people to buy their merchandise instead. In an announcement on Thursday, the company calls the lawsuits a new offensive against bad actors."
The lawsuits are nearly identical. They all run 18 pages and feature identical tales of DMCA abuse utilizing copy-pasted images and text being bogusly portrayed as original content created by the DMCA takedown notice abusers. Here they are for your enjoyment(??): v. DHUOG [PDF], v. SIDESK [PDF], and v. VIVCIC [PDF].
Each one more identical than the next. Except for SIDESK. While the other two deal with a relative handful of false infringement claims (less than 600 between the two), bogus takedowns and methodical IP fraud appear to be Sidesk's primary business. I mean, it's literally the founding principles.
The trademark application that Sidesk used to gain entry to Amazon Brand Registry was fraudulent. The USPTO had terminated the trademark application for the Sidesk mark on December 10, 2021, but Sidesk still relied on this trademark application when applying to Amazon Brand Registry on December 16, 2021.
Having discovered the faux foot Sidesk used to get in Amazon's door, the online retail behemoth went looking for more. And found plenty of it.
The Sidesk trademark application lists an individual purportedly named Shan Zhu as the attorney of record who filed the application on the trademark owner's behalf. An investigation by the USPTO, however, found that the application for the Sidesk mark was in fact filed by officers, employees, or agents of an organization named Shenzhen Huanyee Intellectual Property Co., Ltd., and its Executive Director, Yusha Zhang (collectively, Huanyee").
Hey, multi-nationals gonna multi-national. Surely, Amazon can respect that. However, Huanyee apparently has no respect for US intellectual property law, something that saw it earn some pushback from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. If nothing else, you've got to admire the shear breadth of the grift.
After the USPTO's investigation of the trademark application for the Sidesk mark and over 15,800 other trademark applications submitted by Huanyee, the Commissioner for Trademarks, David Gooder, issued a sanctions order against Huanyee for filing over 15,800 trademark applications using false, fictitious, or fraudulent domicile information and/or credentials.
Every last one of these registrations was terminated by the USPTO. One of those terminated was the one Sidesk used to secure a spot on Amazon's Brand Registry.
Amazon is seeking injunctions against these three named accounts and any Does associated with the IP-abusing businesses. It's also seeking damages, but it seems unlikely it will uncover the real people behind the (apparently bogus) businesses abusing the DMCA process for fun and profit. And even if it does, it seems unlikely these, um, entrepreneurs will have the liquidity to cover the tab.
That being said, this still works as a deterrent. Knowing Amazon's team is keeping an eye (actually, more than 24,000 human eyes, according to statements made in these lawsuits) on potential DMCA abuse will nudge a few fraudsters towards honesty... or at least taking their so-called business elsewhere.