More than 30 sellers’ stores were frozen, with losses reaching millions of dollars

For cross-border e-commerce sellers, one of the biggest concerns is product infringement. Once sued for infringement, the seller’s listing could be removed from the shelves at best, or the seller’s account could be blocked, the funds in the account could be frozen, and the seller would have to pay huge compensation for the losses.

Recently, several cross-border e-commerce sellers revealed that the XX base they had been selling for 5 years was frozen and faced prosecution because the patent was preemptively registered by a competitor . Currently, at least 30 sellers have received notice of store freezing.

It is understood that the patent holder of the XX base involved in this case applied for a patent on February 3, 2021, and was authorized a US appearance patent on November 23, 2021. The patent is valid until November 23, 2036.

After the patent application was successfully filed, the holder filed a lawsuit against many sellers selling similar products in the Chicago Court of the United States on April 20, 2022. There are currently 4 cases involved , and a TRO (emergency temporary injunction) was applied for , resulting in the freezing of many sellers' stores.

It is understood that this product is a public model product and has been sold in the market for nearly 10 years . Sellers of the same product generally believe that this is an act of malicious patent registration.

The affected sellers this time are very wide-ranging. They sell this product on multiple mainstream US e-commerce platforms including Amazon, Walmart, Wish, eBay, etc. After being sued, the funds frozen in these sellers' stores range from US$4,000 to US$5,000 to as high as hundreds of thousands of US dollars . The total store losses are as high as one million US dollars.

Currently, the sellers being sued are jointly defending their rights. The Shenzhen Cross-border Trade Association has organized the sellers to meet with lawyers and send letters to the law firm responsible for TRO through lawyers . Amazon responded that the account will be unblocked within two days . The sellers plan to sue the other party's law firm, intending to respond to the lawsuit first and then reject the other party's ban.

The latest development of the incident is that the stores of 12 sellers who received letters from lawyers have been unblocked.

In addition, some sellers reported that they had recently encountered malicious complaints of patent infringement. The complained product had a function that was somewhat similar to the complaining party's product, but the design of other components was very different. The other party registered a utility model patent for this function and then complained against the seller. The complaining party's product was sold in the United States, while the complained party's product was sold in Japan, and there was no competition at all. The complained seller still had no solution after coordinating with the service provider, and directly lost tens of thousands of yuan.

In the United States, it only costs about 10,000 yuan to register a patent, and malicious registration can quickly make a profit. More and more people are beginning to take advantage of this opportunity to register or file a complaint against the seller's trademark .

It should be noted that Amazon does not recognize public model products . As long as a seller registers a patent and complains about infringement, the product will be removed from the shelves.

It is not uncommon for cross-border e-commerce sellers to have their trademarks registered by others . If a trademark is registered maliciously, sellers can use the law to unite to protect their rights, and at the same time hire American lawyers to intervene, file lawsuits , and apply to the Trademark Trial and Reconsideration Board (TTAB) to cancel the trademark.

However, sellers should still plan ahead to prevent preemptive registration . They should pay attention to the application announcement of US trademarks and file an objection or lawsuit in time if they find preemptive registration to avoid damage to their own interests .

Patent registration

Store freeze