In the face of malicious complaints from law firms headed by GBC in the United States, how to deal with them and how to prevent them in the future?

American GBC law firm is located in Chicago, USA. Its full name is Greer Burns & Crain Ltd, and one of its main businesses is to handle international intellectual property litigation. Because of its large scale of mass litigation against sellers suspected of infringement on e-commerce platforms, especially the high prosecution rate against sellers in China, the whole e-commerce circle is terrified. This is not only because of its strict litigation requirements, but also because it and other American law firms have a precedent of “fishing law enforcement”, which makes many sellers in China unable to move. So far, many big sellers of mainstream platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, Wish have been “tortured” by them, not to mention small and medium sellers. In order to better prevent the infringement prosecution of GBC law firm for counterfeiting, we bring you routine analysis and coping strategies.

1. Infringement litigation in recent years

In order to master the routine and preventive strategy of GBC professional counterfeiting, we must first understand how this industry has risen and the infringement lawsuits in recent years. This can take 2017 as the demarcation point of infringement treatment innovation.

GBC will not participate in this kind of infringement before 2017, when the main way to solve infringement is litigation. For example, if the seller infringes converse, converse will directly complain about the seller’s infringement of rights and interests from the complaint platform, and the platform will also take corresponding measures, such as forcibly removing the shelf or deducting points, which will not be serious enough to impose legal punishment and bear criminal responsibility.

After 2017, the handling method will be very different. Like the same example mentioned above, the infringed party will choose more legal procedures, and the complained platform will be sued by the US court, mainly asking for freezing the funds in the seller’s account. At the same time, the seller will often fall into the trap of the law firm “fishing law enforcement”. In similar cases, wish and eBay are the two platforms that suffered the most. In addition, like Google,Facebook’s traffic platform and AliExpress, Amazon’s shopping platform has had a tragic American court prosecution experience. In contrast, platforms in Southeast Asia, Africa and Russia are relatively safe at present.

But what makes people most helpless and angry is that the hottest traffic platforms, e-commerce platforms and collection platforms are all from the United States, which really makes the whole cross-border e-commerce business circle feel unfair and have to be slaughtered. The most fundamental reason is that at this stage, the development technology in China needs to be improved, new products are difficult to develop, and the immature market also makes most sellers and manufacturers approach imitations, and then move towards the road of infringement and traffic abuse.

Second, what should the seller do after TRO is frozen?

Now in the international situation of escalating confrontation between China and the United States, it is conceivable that GBC’s infringement prosecution is supported by political stance, and they can’t hide the rise of China (here is speculation _).

In the face of the current situation, if the sellers are unfortunately sued by GBC for anti-infringement, they have no choice but to be frozen by TRO. Many sellers can’t stand the consumption of time and money, especially for small and medium-sized sellers, so most sellers have to choose whether to settle the case (of course, if the funds are large, they will generally consider responding to the lawsuit).

Different platforms deal with TRO in different ways. For example, wish and AliExpress will freeze part of the seller’s funds, while Amazon will inform the seller that all the funds have been frozen, and more sales will be frozen. If the seller does not choose to settle after freezing, he will always receive a freezing warning email. This kind of e-mail is just a kind of fishing law enforcement way, which contains information that requires the seller to respond, and will induce the seller to compensate more money through this way. Therefore, ignoring the e-mail is the best choice. The account will be held in court within one or two months after being frozen, and the judgment result is not unexpected, that is, the seller is required to pay huge compensation. From the next three months to the sixth month at most, according to the routine of the law firm, the seller may be frozen again, but what makes people helpless is that the amounts frozen twice are independent and will not be generalized. However, the experiences of different sellers are not necessarily the same. Some may only freeze part of the funds, or some sellers have been operating for several years, but their accounts have not been frozen, while others are miserable, and all the store funds may be frozen in just a few days (different e-commerce platforms have different freezing rules).

If settlement is chosen, the seller can find a professional lawyer after being frozen for the first time and entrust him to negotiate a settlement agreement with the opposing lawyer. If it is a similar lawsuit in the same period, he can choose to organize a group to ask a lawyer to settle and discuss a “confession settlement”. Generally, if the amount is small, the settlement fee is more than 500 US dollars, but not more than 2,000 US dollars, but it is not necessarily the case. If the prosecution has a high degree of knowledge of our information and evidence, the settlement fee will be paid. After the settlement fund is negotiated and unified, the two parties can sign the settlement letter in about one month. There are two options for the settlement fund, namely “wire transfer” and “platform payment”. In contrast, wire transfer is faster and more convenient. However, after that, the complainant needs to request the platform to withdraw the lawsuit, and the time required for unfreezing the assets is not fixed, from a few days to more than two months;

If there are a lot of frozen funds, even if settlement is made several times first, American law firms will eventually freeze most of the funds and spend a lot of time to communicate. In this case, it is recommended to respond to the lawsuit (a comprehensive assessment of attorney fees is required). As long as the funds can survive for two months and the estimated total expenditure for direct settlement is less than the total expenditure for responding to the lawsuit, it is very recommended to respond to the lawsuit, otherwise it will nourish them and make them more unscrupulous …

3. How to solve the complaint of GBC quickly?

In the face of GBC’s complaint, the seller must first do ideological work in advance, fully grasp the general situation of the store, and make a certain prediction about the possibility of his own loss, and then decide whether to settle. There are two reference methods here. The first is to choose reconciliation, that is, when the store or flagship store directly belongs to its own name and most of the income comes from the accused store, the cost of choosing reconciliation in this case is about half a month’s income of the store. Second, if the store is small in scale and its monthly income is low, the loss of freezing the store will not be great, so you can choose to refuse to settle and wait for the result naturally. The seller can even make a bold rush and vigorously promote a wave of in-store products before freezing again (this is a non-Amazon platform, because the Amazon platform is frozen, and all the money sold later is frozen). If you are lucky, there may not be a so-called second freeze, so won’t it be profitable? However, this requires the seller to grasp the opportunity to adjust the strategy. However, some people will ask whether it is necessary to rise to the legal level if no response is taken. This answer cannot be answered for the time being, because there is no such case yet, and it may or may not be necessary, so we have to wait for the case to be analyzed.

Fourth, how should the seller prevent the prosecution of GBC

According to the incidence of cases on various platforms, Amazon has the least crime rate, AliExpress has more, and eBay and wish have more. If we want to avoid GBC fundamentally, we should improve the ability to distinguish the imitation goods, and we should be careful in product selection and new product listing. In this respect, Amazon has done a good job. Strict product selection for sellers means strict self-platform management, so there are not many GBC cases (however, in recent years, Amazon platform infringement sellers have shown an increasing trend). However, platforms such as eBay and wish, which have a high crime ratio, are naturally more likely to be affected by GBC because they can’t select products accurately, but operate by distributing goods.

The second preventive work is to search for buyers marked by high-frequency complaint law firms in ERP, and then import their accounts into the seller’s own blacklist.

Another preventive strategy is to stay away from the American market and avoid markets involving the United States. However, in the international context of further globalization, staying away from the American market is also an obstacle to the development of store economy. In addition, as far as the current comprehensive development of science and technology is concerned, the versatility of each platform is constantly improving, and it is not realistic to completely block the American market.

(The article comes from the Internet)