Amazon selling? Are they kidding?!

I've never looked into selling anything of my own on Amazon, but I am big into their affiliate system. I guess this is how some of these big companies tend to roll these days...look at the Big G..they pretty much do what they want purely because they have the number to do it.

I wouldn't honestly think that, at all, Robyna.

There's a legal issue, here, which makes that irrelevant.

I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that one of the points about trademarks is that they effectively confer obligations, as well as rights, on the trademark owner. When Amazon apply to get their trademark renewed, if it could by shown by someone that they'd knowingly failed to prevent, or failed to act over, a breach of it, they might be in real trouble - as people have been before, in those circumstances.

This is why so many businesses defend their trademarks so vigorously, even when people are using them in a domain-name in an attempt to sell the company's products.

The superficial logic of "Well, we should allow it because this person's helping to sell our stuff" simply doesn't apply at all. "Just saying" ...

Here's Amazon's seller agreement. Take a look at paragraph number 4 and also the definitions. They aren't fooling around- they're serious. So if you have a very good product they can take it and manufacture it and there's nothing you can do about it.

The "they probably won't" argument isn't one I want to test.


General Terms

4. License.
You grant us a royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, perform, display, distribute, adapt, modify, re-format, create derivative works of, and otherwise commercially or non-commercially exploit in any manner, any and all of Your Materials, and to sublicense the foregoing rights to our affiliates and operators of Amazon Associated Properties; provided, however, that we will not alter any of Your Trademarks from the form provided by you (except to re-size trademarks to the extent necessary for presentation, so long as the relative proportions of such trademarks remain the same) and will comply with your removal requests as to specific uses of Your Trademarks (provided you are unable to do so using standard functionality made available to you via the Amazon Site or Services); provided further, however, that nothing in this Agreement will prevent or impair our right to use Your Materials without your consent to the extent that such use is allowable without a license from you or your affiliates under applicable law (e.g., fair use under United States copyright law, referential use under trademark law, or valid license from a third party).
If Your Elected Country is the United States, conditioned upon your compliance with the Trademark Usage Guidelines, Amazon grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-assignable, revocable right and license during the term of this Agreement to use the Amazon Marks solely in connection with your use of the Services for which the Amazon Marks were provided to you. You must use the Amazon Marks solely in the manner in which they were provided to you, meaning you may not change, alter, amend, vary, or modify the Amazon Marks in any way, at any time. You may not use any Amazon Mark except as expressly provided herein, and may not sublicense these rights or otherwise permit any party to use the Amazon Marks. You acknowledge that Amazon and its affiliates are the sole owners of the Amazon Marks, and you agree to do nothing inconsistent with that ownership. All goodwill arising out of your use of the Amazon Marks will inure to the sole benefit of Amazon and its affiliates. Amazon may revoke your license to any or all of the Amazon Marks at any time in its sole discretion. Upon the termination this Agreement, or termination or suspension of the Services for which any Amazon Mark was provided to you, you shall immediately cease and discontinue all further use of the Amazon Mark.



"Intellectual Property Right" means any patent, copyright, Trademark, domain name, moral right, trade secret right, or any other intellectual property right arising under any Laws and all ancillary and related rights, including all rights of registration and renewal and causes of action for violation, misappropriation or infringement of any of the foregoing.

"Your Materials" means all Technology, Your Trademarks, Content, Your Product information, data, materials, and other items provided or made available by you or your affiliates to Amazon or its affiliates.



"Your Product" means any product that is made available for listing for sale, offered for sale, or sold by you through the WebStore Service or the Selling on Amazon Service, and/or fulfilled or otherwise processed through the Fulfillment by Amazon Service.

You're right. All they have to say is, "If you don't like it- sue us". I wonder who'll win?

Read that fourth paragraph again. It says nothing at all about reverse-engineering, manufacturing, or anything like it.

It says that if you sell your product via Amazon, they get to use your advertising copy, product photos, logos, etc. to promote your product. They expressly deny themselves the right to violate your trademarks, and offer the option to cancel said licenses at any time.

In return, you also get the right and license to use Amazon's marks in your own promotions, should you choose to do so.

It's pretty simple once you deconstruct the legalese. And not the dastardly plan to steal IP that some make it out to be...

It would've been nice but the link changes so you wouldn't have seen the same thing I saw.