Cross-border e-commerce intellectual property series (1)

Summary of types of intellectual property infringement by cross-border e-commerce in the United States

In recent years, cross-border e-commerce disputes over intellectual property rights have remained high. Intellectual property rights have become one of the important means of competition for overseas companies to restrict Chinese cross-border e-commerce practitioners.

Type 1: Malicious attack type <br>This type of rights protection aims to maliciously attack competitors and make infringement complaints against Chinese sellers. The accused infringing party often does not actually infringe the intellectual property rights of the rights defender, and even the rights defender has not actually obtained the relevant intellectual property rights. Therefore, the real purpose of this type of rights protection is to take advantage of the imperfections of e-commerce platform rules or the characteristics of local litigation procedures to prevent competitors from operating normally within a certain period of time, thereby losing their competitive advantage.

Type 2: Casting a wide net to make profits <br>This type of rights protection aims to cast a wide net to make huge profits, and files infringement complaints or lawsuits against Chinese sellers. This is a situation that Chinese sellers have often fallen prey to in the United States in recent years. Rights defenders often carefully plan "fishing traps", search and fix sales or promised sales records that infringe or may infringe their intellectual property rights on various domestic and overseas sales platforms, file lawsuits against dozens or even thousands of sellers in court at one time, and apply for freezing These sellers' PayPal accounts will be used to negotiate, reconcile and withdraw the case one by one. Most of these defendants are Chinese sellers. Some only promise to sell infringing products, and some have only sold single-digit amounts of related products. Chinese sellers are often unwilling to respond to lawsuits or ignore them. Even if they respond to lawsuits, the chance of winning is very small unless they can provide evidence of "fishing." In addition, each seller's account can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. As long as the Chinese seller gives up responding to the lawsuit or agrees to settle out of court, the rights defender can achieve the purpose of receiving compensation. At present, there are several American law firms whose main business is such cases, providing rights defenders with one-stop services including the above-mentioned collection, fixing clues and evidence, prosecution, negotiation, reconciliation, case withdrawal, etc. For example, the four major American law firms All GBC, EPS, Keith, SMG, etc.