An Amazon seller was sentenced to prison 7 weeks ago in part for "ginning up" false allegations about competitors. The government alleged that one competitor was suspended from the Amazon Marketplace because of a false intellectual property (IP) complaint filed by the defendant and his coconspirators in what's known as the Amazon bribery case.
That makes this week's news of Amazon's civil lawsuits against bad actors whom it alleged filed false IP complaints against its sellers (known as false takedowns) even more notable.
In a press release announcing the actions, Amazon said the multiple bad actors had submitted thousands of false copyright infringement claims against Amazon's selling partners in an effort to have those sellers and their products removed from the Amazon store. "These false claims attempted to reduce customer choice, harm Amazon's selling partners, and damage the integrity of Amazon's store."
Amazon alleged that defendants first registered with its Brand Registry and then created fake, disposable websites, with product images scraped from the Amazon store, to use as false evidence when making thousands of claims that selling partners were violating their copyrights. Amazon noted that 700,000 brands are currently enrolled in Brand Registry.
"Bad actors may use this tactic as a way of attacking and fraudulently suppressing or altering listings for competitors' products so that consumers are more likely to buy the same products from the bad actors or their...

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