How to prevent fishing law enforcement in some American law firms from freezing funds caused by intellectual property infringement?

Because Illinois has its own independent legislation, many trademark infringement cases are accepted and finally judged here, and the frequent outbreak of such cases has also had a great impact on many e-commerce sellers. Therefore, in order to let more e-commerce friends avoid the risk of being “phishing”, freezing and clearing their accounts, we will introduce to you how to prevent “phishing” law enforcement.

(1) How do they “fish”?

Generally speaking, in some cases, GBC or some other attorneys representing the plaintiff will look for some specific companies or personnel (hereinafter described as “fishermen”) to investigate and collect evidence of infringement. Let’s take the online shop on eBay as an example. Their process is probably that “fishing” personnel appear in the form of buyers, looking for products similar to or the same as the original brand in the online shop. However, because the eBay platform is associated with the PayPal account, it is easy for these “phishing” personnel to obtain evidence. They only need to buy any product in the online store, even if the product does not involve infringement, they can get the seller’s PayPal account, as long as the screenshot is saved, so their evidence collection work is completed (some brands want a more complete chain of evidence, so they directly place an order for the infringing product and keep the spot and courier as evidence). However, once the infringement is involved in online stores on other platforms, such as Ali International Station and AliExpress, these “phishing” personnel not only have to obtain the seller’s relevant collection account, but also obtain the seller’s PayPal account through some other house methods, such as asking about a certain product they want to buy. As long as the seller provides their account, they will restrict and freeze it as an account involving infringement. This also explains why my outlet is not linked to my PayPal account, but it has been frozen.

(2) Their “fishing” list

Plaintiffs who generally engage in “fishing” are mostly in Illinois, New York and Florida. When their law firms usually deal with trademark infringement cases, they will let special companies investigate all kinds of evidence of infringement of sellers, and those who investigate the company are good at obtaining evidence of infringement or obtaining sellers’ accounts by means of false inquiry or real purchase of goods. As long as the investigation company tells these accounts to the plaintiff’s brand, they will immediately file a lawsuit with the court and apply for an injunction to freeze the seller’s account.

Through the cases represented by the author in recent years, we can see that most sellers are sued because they are caught in the plaintiff’s “fishing” means, which makes sellers complain. There are more and more ID patterns of buyers on the plaintiff’s side, which makes it impossible for sellers to distinguish. However, the vast majority of “fishermen” generally register their accounts in Chicago, Illinois, USA. If you meet buyers in this area in the course of business, you must be cautious again, and don’t leak your accounts easily.

How can we fundamentally prevent being sued for trademark infringement? The most important thing is to strictly examine the products they sell. No matter the boss himself or every salesperson in the company, they should do their duty and be responsible for the examination of the products sold on the shelves. Not only that, but they should also learn more about the specific information of major brands, improve their vigilance and prevent being “fished”.

Since 2012, in the field of cross-border e-commerce, thousands of China merchants have been sued by their original brands for infringing their trademarks in the United States. Most of the sued businesses are sellers operating on Amazon, eBay, Ali International Station and AliExpress. With the development of the industry, more and more sellers on other platforms are sued for infringement, such as wish and Dunhuang. After a merchant involved in an infringement case is sued for infringing the plaintiff’s trademark, both the platform and the other party’s lawyer will send a notification email to the merchant to inform him that his account has been frozen due to infringement.

In the past, such cases were handled very quickly. If the defendant failed to respond on time, the court that accepted the case about one and a half months after the case was established would usually treat the situation as default, and sentenced the defendant to compensate the plaintiff for the infringement of the plaintiff’s trademark ranging from ten to two million dollars. Once the court makes a default judgment, the whole case will be enforced, and all the funds in the frozen account will be compensated to the plaintiff according to law. If the funds in the account are insufficient to enforce the judgment made by the court, the defendant’s account will be permanently restricted. Not only that, but the defendant’s collection accounts involving infringing shops or websites established by himself involving the sale of infringing goods also include domestic accounts. As long as they are found by the plaintiff, they have the right to apply for freezing these accounts by virtue of the judgment, which will make it difficult for the sued e-commerce friends.

Up to now, after the author’s various considerations, if your infringement case can meet the above conditions, the possibility of recovering the cleared funds in your account is very great. And if the funds in the account can be successfully recovered, it will be an extremely successful feat. But at the same time, it also needs the efforts and cooperation of sellers to achieve this goal.