IP Claims On Amazon, what they are and how to avoid them!

Are you worried about reselling products that you don't own the rights to on Amazon and getting a complaint, letter, or notification that sounds like their about to shut down your entire account? 

Lets first try to understand what exactly these IP complaints are!

What is an IP Complaint? 

An IP Complaint is an intellectual property complaint that can be filed against you as an Amazon seller. There are a few different types of IP complaints including trademark, copyright, and counterfeit. Each of these types of complaints can be filed against you as seller of products that you don't own the rights to. 

It's pretty common to see these complaints being filed against you when you're using the Online Arbitrage or Retail Arbitrage sourcing methods because the products you are selling are bought from retail or online websites. If you want to learn more about these sourcing methods then check out our article “What's Online Arbitrage? The Art of making money on Amazon in 2021” 

IP claim issue could lead to account suspension so it's important to take this serious.

How Can I tell if I received a IP Claim against me?

The best way to see if you have any complaints against you is to get into your Seller Central account and head to the account health section. This can be found under “Performance>Account Health" You will see “suspected IP violations” and “received IP complaints” the received ones are the ones that will affect your account health the most. You should still pay attention to the suspected violations too however.

What do I do if I have received an IP complaint?

1. The first thing you want to do is reach out to the filer of the complaint. This information is provided by Amazon to you. Amazon really wants you to try and handle this without their need to step in. Contact the person who filed the complaint and plead your case. Let them know where you sourced the product from, provide them with receipts, and let them know you won't sell their product anymore. Ask them to retract their complaint so it will be removed from your record.
2. If step 1 doesn't resolve your issue then you're left with providing Amazon with a plan of action (POA). This will be discussed further in a future article! For now let's focus on how you can avoid complaints to the best of your ability.

How can I avoid IP complaints in the future?

Fortunately there are a few ways I can help here! There are 2 ways I can suggest to help you avoid IP issues.

      1. Use Keepa to see high risk IP claim products

The first method is FREE if you have a paid Keepa account. 

When you're sourcing products via online arbitrage take a look at the offer count on the Keepa chart. If there's only 1 or 2 sellers for a product that you've found at a retail or online site then go back and check the history deeper. Is there more than 2 sellers ever? If not then I'd stay away. Having only 1 or 2 sellers in the full offer count history tells me that the brand is probably strictly monitoring who is selling their products. The Keepa graph below shows an example of this. 

Another common sight is when there are many offer counts on a product that suddenly drop to only 1 or 2 within an extremely short period of time. 
The graph below shows the new offer count going from about 35 all the way down to 2 in one night. I would never take the risk with this product!

     2. Use the chrome extension IP ALERT

Luckily for us there are a lot of extremely smart people in the community. One of them being a good friend of mine, Chris Grant. He and his team have built a really nice tool that houses a database of brands who have filed IP claims against sellers before. Each brand is vetted by his own eyes and requires proof via documentation before being added to the database so you can trust it. 

IP Alert Discount!
OA Hunt readers get $30 off a lifetime license! Use code “OAHUNT30” when you checkout that's right just a one time payment gets you the tool for life! Bringing the price down to an unbelievable $170. I would gladly pay two or three times that for this and not bat an eye. It's really a great investment! Click the link HERE to learn more. 

Be sure to check out the other discounts you get as an OA Hunt blog reader too by clicking HERE

Interview with Chris Grant