#461 - Counterfeits, Hijackers, & IP Nightmares: Protecting Your Brand on Amazon with Daren Garcia

Welcome to episode 461 of the AMM podcast. You know, everybody always wants to be chasing the sexy things, the the launching a new product, the PPC, the getting the the Tik Tok creator to make something go viral, but the fundamentals are what often are the most important and most overlooked and the last to deal with. And they can cost you dearly. And you you'll see that uh in my discussion today with Darren Garcia from Vores. We're going to be talking about uh everybody's favorite topic, IP protection and counterfeits and knockoffs and and what you can do and how you can protect yourself as a brand. So, Boris has been doing this for a long time, big huge law firm out of Ohio. I think you'll get some uh good ideas and some good insights and how the process works in this discussion with Mr. Darren Garcia. Enjoy. Welcome to the AM podcast. Welcome to the AM PM podcast where we explore opportunities in e-commerce covered. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, plus this is the podcast for money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the A.M. and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you you ready? Ready. Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King, [Music] Counselor Garcia, how are you doing? Darren Garcia here on the AM PM podcast from Vores. How are you, man? Yeah, good. I'm good. Thanks for having me, Kevin. That's good. Good stuff. All good here. So, looking forward to it today. Now, when whenever I say I've got a lawyer on the podcast, some people are like, "Oh my god." Um, what are we what are we going to be talking about today? I've got a few questions uh for for this Mr. Lawyer guy. Um so uh hopefully we can provide some uh value today and I don't have I don't have to give that disclaimer that uh I just play a lawyer on TV. This is not legal. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, we can get it from someone that's a little bit more in the trenches. Let's do it. Let's do it. So, uh tell me a little bit about I mean uh you've been practicing law for a while and you've been at Vores, I think, for for a while. what what is Vores and uh tell me a little bit about uh your story. Yeah, so Vores is a is a relatively large uh international law firm. It's historic uh headquarters in the state of Ohio with offices throughout the states and then and then over in uh over in Europe. I've been here my whole career, so I probably 23ish years or so. Um and done various things uh at the firm, but uh you know, we're here to talk today about e control. We'll get into all that, but that would be a specialized group within the Boris firm cuz there's like 300 400 lawyers. I mean, you guys do everything from basic corporate law. I mean, it's across the gamut, right? Oh, yeah. No, it's a it's a full service firm that does, you know, probably the only thing that we don't do would be criminal and uh domestic issues and and things like that. We probably touch most other most other things at some way or another. Do you litigate? Is the firm litigate as well or Okay. Yeah, the uh the firm's historic roots were in litigation. I came up as a litigator. A lot of people that do what we do in our group came up as as litigators. So, they sort of bring that mindset into the uh into the e-commerce space. So, it's been a good sort of foundation for all this stuff that we're doing now. Now, you guys have been doing e-commerce. Did you all start getting into it when uh this whole Amazon third party kind of boom started happening around 2014, 2015 or were you doing it before then? Yeah, interestingly, I I have a partner Whitney Gibson um in Cincinnati. I sit in in in Columbus and I manage our London office. So, I'm back and forth between the states and Europe quite a bit. But, uh Whitney at a very young age had a practice centered around internet defamation. So think like the early days of Yelp and things like that when those began to be a big deal and companies would get, you know, defamed or slandered or whatever and on those platforms and they started to have an impact and so businesses would reach out and he ended up getting a lot of the early work in that space. Uh which really was some of the early days of integrating law and data tech because you needed to be able to look out across the web, see what was being said and then have a scalable way to to address that. So, fast forward a bit um and you know, Amazon started to really catch fire and branded manufacturers started to have to wrestle with the channel a bit more. You know, instead of maybe 3, four, 5% of revenue, all of a sudden it's 8 n 10 and executives start to take notice. So, they start trying to manage it a bit. And so, uh, they started, brands started reaching out saying, "Hey, you know, I I get that, you know, people may say things about us online, but what I'm most concerned about are these people selling our stuff on on marketplaces like Amazon, disrupting us." So, that's really how we how we got into that. He uh he and a couple other guys down in Cincinnati went into the Batcave and came up with some of the early uh strategies and and really frameworks that really we still use today on this stuff. And um then I teamed up with them just sort of contemporaries of mine in the firm. I teamed up with them oh after they were doing it for maybe a few months or a year or so. So it was really early days still and then we've just kind of gone gone from there. I came up doing a lot of work in the retail space. So as retail brands started coming up and caring about things like map and how much they're selling and all of that. He said hey you know a lot about retail. would you come with me out to go talk to this brand and in case they they wanted to talk about retail stuff and so I said sure and that's how we kind of tinkedked up on this. So how big is the team that focuses on e-commerce? Yeah, I mean it's it's big now. I mean it's uh it's probably around 100 people without all multid-disciplinary. lawyers, investigators, brand protection people, data analysts, data scientists, software developers. I mean, within the the collective group of Bory's e- control and then the firms uh ancillary business that we own called precision econtroller runs the data and tech platforms, there's probably at least a hundred of us doing it full-time. Now, are you guys doing across the globe or is it just like in I saw on your website there's certain states that you guys are where you have offices? something cuz I know you can't there's certain rules where you can do you can practice and do stuff in certain states or you can only litigate or you can only enforce you can threaten anywhere but you can only enforce um uh in certain states so is it across the globe or just uh more localized no we do work globally um which has been amazing but um yeah the firm's physical offices around this around the US are in various you know cities and certainly if if you want to turn up to court or actually you know practice law in a particular jurisdiction you have to be licensed there but you know we have a national practice in the US in this space and then as you point out an international one uh most of the work internationally being Canada Europe Australia China Korea uh I'm sure I'm missing a couple of others but those would be those would be some of the bigger markets internationally all the international stuff for us now you mentioned like the the guy that uh Whitney I think you said his name was that that started up uh kind of with Etsy and and Yelp and some of those guys uh in the early days. There's is there something that there's some sort of law in the US where the the marketplaces are kind of immune uh you know just like on Facebook, you know, they're not really liable for if someone slanders you or does something they they are responsible to take it down if they have a court order and and things like that, but they're kind of like a they're like we're just the middleman. We're not involved here. And there's some sort of law or rule around that that I mean yes the the platforms have largely you know so you could put Amazon in there Walmart marketplace you know eBay on down the line you know they've taken the position that they are just as you say open platforms that provide a place for people to buy and sell product you know they may also in the case of like an Amazon or Walmart be uh selling the product there themselves in kind of a firstparty scenario but Um but yeah, they've taken the position that we just facilitate the transactions. You know, if there's issues going on, um that the brand is upset about the brand has its recourse, but it's not really with us. We're just the platform. It's it's with respect to the person out there doing whatever it is the brand doesn't want to be done. How does that differ from the law? I mean, just that if I go into a a grocery store and they just recently mopped the floor and I slip on and fall and break my arm, I can sue the grocery store. How come I can't do that like in a marketplace like go after Amazon for looking the other way? Um or or creating an environment where they don't enforce certain things. Yeah. I mean, so you know, I mean, obviously there's a lot of nuance all that and to everybody listening, this isn't legal advice. Check with your check with your lawyers. It really comes down to, you know, in your example, like the grocery store would have control over the physical premises. They're inviting people onto the platform and, you know, they're the ones that have the control over the floor and and all of that. You know, like a marketplace, you know, an online marketplace's position would be like, look, we just provide the platform. The resellers are the one controlling whether the product that they have is authorized or unauthorized, whether it's counterfeit or real, you know, those sorts of things. And so, you know, that that would be the difference there. Well, Amazon typically from a legal point of view, whether that's collecting sales tax or whether that's enforcing liability and insurance rules and all kinds of stuff, usually like they they don't really act like they should until they're forced to. usually uh by by legal or action or something's going to happen in Congress or there's a big huge story that comes out that you know by one of the reputable uh you know Wall Street Journal or someone like that where credibility and then then they take a little bit of action but then they it I just remember like with the sales tax thing they just like oh that's not us and then finally it came around like okay that is us um and it's kind of the same when it comes to IP and other things too isn't it? Well, yeah. I mean, so in our experience, I'll say this. I mean, obviously, everybody wants the Amazons of the world that, you know, or wherever you are in the world, you know, Baba Group, whatever, to be more proactive around infringements and carpet and safety and is something being sold here that, you know, has ingredients that aren't legal in the US or in Europe or vice versa. And you know, I guess what we would say is they do a pretty good job at providing tools for things that are like really true like hardcore IP infringement. So counterfeiting um even down to like stolen product and thing, the the counterfeit crimes unit and and whatnot. And that's that's all fine. That you know, there's different layers to that type of stuff. I mean, you can sit there and press the buttons and do and do takeowns. you can escalate things to the legal department there and and get them to take notice if it's a significant issue. I mean, you start to see brands get into gating and and things like that if they have massive counterfeit issues and Amazon believes that, you know, it's an Amazon in the consumer's interest that that there be heightened protections. But you know where they don't get involved in our world would be around things like unauthorized sale from the brand's perspective of legitimate product respecting math policies distribution go to markets things like that that's where you know I think the brand's desires collide with Amazon's or you know whatever the the marketplace is but let's just say Amazon's short for marketplace today you know their their posture that look we're just that open platform that's where things really get disrupted most often. I see a lot of sellers in the forums and stuff, I've been doing this for a long time, that they'll they'll say, "Oh, I got a hijacker on my listing. I got they'll do one of these promotions, these search find buys where they they send out a free product in exchange for hoping to get some reviews. You know, they couch it under different different things, but uh the ultimate goal is to to get rank in reviews. And then the person that got this free product really doesn't care for this product, doesn't want the product, probably never even opened and used it. just wrote a review and now they're they're selling it on their listing and they they think that's uh counterfeiting or hijacking or and it's really not because it's something called the first sale doctrine in the US. Can you explain what that is and how it's different in the US versus like your in your London office there's different rules. Can you explain how how what that is? Yeah, I mean I think I I think it's probably you know say for those listening to understand generally really in every market around the world that it's fine to buy and resell product. Okay. Um you know we call it the first sale doctrine in the US and other countries of the world it's maybe called exhaustion princip exhaustion doctrine or the exhaustion principle or things like that. And what that means is that once a manufacturer a brand makes something and and sells it the first time. So, you make a widget, you sell it to a distributor, that distributor then goes and and resells it down the the chain. Once you sell it that first time to to the distributor, it could be bought and resold. So, somebody could say, "I have a Kevin brand widget and that's what I'm reselling." And that's okay. They're allowed to use your, you know, information, your brand, and things to resell. That's that's really what that means. Um, and that's really why if you if you really think about it, things like marketplaces can exist in the first place is because of that rule. Otherwise, people couldn't just take it and and resell it. And so, that's really what brands are are grappling with every day is how do we in the face of that rope uh manage to control our sales on a platform like? Now, I can have an agreement with a distributor, right, that that says if I I do this in advance of actually shipping them or or agreeing to sell them product that basically restricts them from like you're you're not allowed to sell this on Amazon. Now, that doesn't mean that they can't sell it to somebody who then turns around and does it and it still makes its way there uh through the back door in essence, but I can do things like that to protect myself if I want to, right? Yeah, 100%. and and you know that strategy um you know whether it's called you know authorized reselling agreements or in Europe something like that would be called like a selective distribution that's been around for decades and so you'd see you know it's why you don't see like luxury goods in Target or Walmart or you know things like that or why certain brands like high-end electronics and things like that even though they may sell through a distributor you they have that very locked down. I mean those companies have made the decision a long time ago that you know those controlled sales and their long-term brand equity and all of that is more important than any sort of short-term sale. Now that reality is colliding today with more mass distributed brands that have never had those controls in place on the front. And so what they're trying to do is to understand how can we in a logistically feasible way. I can't go get signed, you know, agreements with everybody. How do we in a in a feasible way maintain control over that over that space? So you see them issuing policies and things like that a lot. So when it comes to liab some of some of the liability and some of what's going on with both I mean I I there was a story back in I think May about a lot of counterfeit uh supplements being on Amazon and you don't know you don't know exactly what you're getting and some people are saying this is a got these ingredients and it really doesn't or doesn't have the percentage. That's that's a big issue. And then other another issue is just I don't know if you guys deal with this as well, but it's not really IP, but the product liability. There's another issue in June is in the new New York Post in early June uh where there's a company selling u a device and people are getting hurt left and right. They're using it to like prop up their car. It's like one of these jacks, you know, work under your car to prop up your car. And and it turns out that I think the New York Post did something like 1,400 Better Business Bureau complaints against this company. and they're selling like crazy on Amazon. So, how does what's the way proper way to that those things can be addressed from a legal point of view whether no matter which side you're on? Um Yeah. because that that's just dangerous and that hurts everybody because those sets precedents and and hurts everybody down the chain. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's a um you know it it it's not an uncomplicated issue. I mean, I guess I would say that if you're a brand, you know, whether you're selling car jacks or supplements or whatever, you're running into the reality of this just being, as we've been talking about, an open an open platform. And so, it really is your move as a brand to step in and and control that. I mean, you know, the marketplaces typically aren't going to do it for you or not to do it in a way that you would potentially be be happy with. So what you'll see them do is is is sort of multifaceted. First and foremost, you have to have the data. So you've got to look out and be able to see everybody that's selling your stuff, you know, under your or using your name in their in their listing or or whatever. You got to be able to get your arms around. Then you have to say, okay, what's what's an issue? I mean, is it just an unauthorized sale or to your point, is it something where maybe it's potentially a counterfeit product or things like that? Now there are certain indisha indicators of of a counter good product. You know is the uh is the pricing super low? Is is the seller based in China? Have I never heard of them? You know is it hard to figure out where they have a physical presence in the US? There's all of these little data points that you know that would indicate that there is an issue. Now let's assume that there is. Okay. So you have your first tier things which would be to go like on a brand register or something like that and and and get it taken down. But the smart brands would also be doing a couple of things. They would be compiling a lot of information like okay look I've done all I can. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing on brand registry or if you have e-commerce specifications maybe you add them in transparency or whatever it is. Um but I'm still having these issues. I'm getting overrun. And you know when those uh you know we call them like a little dossier can be assembled and and provided to Amazon in a in a compelling way sometimes not all the time but sometimes um they'll step in and and put a few hurdles in place for people to list the product outside of brands authorized sellers. So that would be sort of now getting into the uh like the realm of gating and the different sort of levels of of gating that's out there. the the um the thing around, you know, the the counterfeits and whatnot is you also have to be very careful as a brand that you're not just calling things counterfeit that you don't know for sure that they are because that that can backfire as well. You see a lot of lawyers out there sort of looking for brands making those mistakes so they can sue, frankly. So let's let's explain what gating is to those listening. Some people may not know what that is. There's brand protection uh with through brand registry which is is limited in scope but then the next level up at Amazon. You used to be able to just request this back seven eight years ago and then it got to where you had to know the right lawyer at Amazon and send the right letter on legal letterhead and they they would gate you and now it's a whole different animal. Uh it's much more difficult to get gated. But can you explain what what gating actually is for those listening? Yeah, in lay terms and just everybody remember I'm just a lawyer. I'm not a I'm not an ecom, you know, I don't I'm not a VP of ecom at some brand. But but here's sort of the the lay definition of of brand gating as I think about it. It would be Amazon itself implementing a a block a blockade to say look we are not going to allow products to be listed unless they are from like a single seller whether that's Amazon 1P itself or the brand itself or whatever. So other third parties can't list the particular product. Now you'll see it more widespread in like a premium beauty and things like that, but outside of that space, it's relatively rare. So you just I mean everybody, you know, it's all over the place on like a LinkedIn and and things like that talking about Nike coming back to Amazon. Well, Nike was able to, you know, effectively be gay and they had the brand power to do that, but there's, you know, the Nikes of few and far between. Yeah, Nike was able to get like 268 sellers or something like that off as well when they came back in or maybe is more than that by now, but they they were able to get a bunch of them off. But so basically like so gating means you got to have permission from the brand to actually list it on Amazon in writing. They got to send a special document and and then then you you're allowed to as a seller to list it. It usually goes under their storefront. It doesn't go under your storefront. Um, but you're allowed to be, you know, a third party seller. And some some big brands, you know, like Body Glove, I've done that in the past with Body Glove, they they allowed that, but others like Nike and and Apple and stuff are very particular on who they who they're going to let do that. They are. And I mean, you know, the gating is kind of like the big unicorn in the in the sky out there. Everybody sort of would, oh, I want to get gated like Nike or, you know, Apple, whatever. It's kind of like look, it's just not going to happen for the average brand. Just it's just contrary to Amazon's, you know, real ethos about the whole thing. Yeah. Everybody wants that monopoly so I don't have to compete against anybody on the buy box and I can control it. Um but so when when usually one of the first steps that happens is a cease and desist letter. And sometimes this comes from a lawyer, sometimes uh it's a chat GPT generated one by a seller trying to scare somebody. Yeah. Can you can you explain the purp what is cease and assist letter is and what the purpose is and is that just a US thing or does that apply like in Europe and stuff too? Well, I mean I think the way to think about a cease and desist is simply just a letter from the brand or from you know the brand's lawyers saying hey you know we know you're selling our product and for these reasons uh we need you to stop to cease and desist what what you're doing. Uh, you know, our view of all of that would be that, you know, for brands to be sending those letters, they have to have the legal basis to be able to send them. You know, there's a whole world out there of people that advertise, oh, I'll get rid of X% of your marketplace sellers or, you know, we have the ability to enforce Amazon sellers or whatnot. And if your brand is sitting there, you know that that's all great, but you have to keep in mind that unless you have a very particular uh foundation, it's fine to buy and sell your stuff. And so the first thing that a brand needs to do before you even get into the cease and desist world is to build that that legal foundation wherever you are in the world. It could be the US, could Europe, Canada, Australia, wherever, um to enable you to even have a basis to go out and and send those. Uh but then those letters are are usually sent to resellers and then they have a choice. Do we comply or do we not? Um and then the brand's next move will depend on you know as all ties back to that foundation that they have. So some some people use cease and desist almost like a a big cannon and they they put all kinds of demands in there like I need copies of your reports and I need copies of this and you're you you must turn over all your inventory by this xy date or else I'm doing xyz and a lot of those are just some of those are serious but some of those are just threats to scare the little guy sitting in his underwear in his house that's selling uh your product on his computer. Um, so when as a seller if I get a cease and assist letter, I mean, I know it's up to me what I do, like you like you just said, but to what level should I pay attention to that? Should I run out and get an attorney? Should I personally answer it myself or should I just ignore it and see if they send a second one and then get get serious or what what as a seller from the seller's point of view? Uh, what what would you recommend a client, one of your clients if they got one of those to do? Well, yeah. I mean, we we represent the brands, not not really the sellers, but I think just as a general matter, you know, I remember when I was in in law school, one of the professors said, "Look, there's a rule in the law that says open your mail, stupid, which is, you know, they what what they were really saying is you can't just ignore things like that." You know, things typically get worse if if they're ignored. And so if you're a seller out there and you do get one of those letters, um, you know, I think it's probably prudent for you to take it to your lawyer or to reach out to the brand yourself if you don't have one and just say, "Hey, what's going on? Um, I got this letter. Why, you know, why are you sending to me?" And then you're likely to hear from the brand. Well, you know, you're not authorized, etc. And then, you know, who's right and who's wrong in that scenario often ties back again. I know I sort of keep repeating this, but does the brand have a legal foundation that would allow them to still enforce against a seller even with that first sale doctrine being sort of uh you know the starting point. Now back at the turn of the decade around 2018 2019 in the Amazon space uh I've been I've been selling third party since 2015 on Amazon since 2001. Vory's had a reputation of in some circles as being a bully and and there was a lot of stuff of going out there and like getting people getting all these cease and desist letters and all kinds of stuff on the forum like they're just bullying. They're just this and that. And then other people are like, "No, that's just good lawyer work. That's just good uh you know, good legal work. They're you know, it's just like uh I don't know, a collection agency. There's some collection agencies that call you and say, hey, you you want to settle your credit card debt?" And there then there's other ones that are digging around and you know using the law to the fullest extent and maybe calling your neighbor and saying you know Kevin or or you know going to the getting uh you know leans or whatever it may be. It's just good work. Um, what would you what what do you remember was going on back then that was causing I think you guys were doing a lot of proactive work on behalf of your clients and it was I I think it was good legal work but a lot of people you know there's lawyers that popped up and said even an industry that popped and said hey we'll help you fight vories like yeah don't let them bully you we we actually know how to do this kind of stuff uh you know and so what what what was going on back then what would you say to Well, yeah. I mean, I think that during that time and really the the activity has only increased year-over-year since since then, but I think around that time a lot of branded manufacturers, you know, it wasn't really just first movers anymore. It was a lot of just mainstream brands that everybody's heard of decided that they needed to proactively assert more control over over the channel. So you saw like a lot more widespread um enforcement. You saw legal decisions come down that said that brands indeed do have the ability to control this um and that there are reasons why. I mean, I guess what I would say is, you know, and again, I I respect the different views of of things and and people's different positions, but from the brand standpoint, you know, they've spent an incredible amount of time and money bringing products to market and they have, you know, certain revenue expectations for those pro for those products, certain go to market strategies. They want to sell through people that are, you know, invested in the distribution and the growth of the brand. And so they want to have, you know, some ability to uh have an appropriate return on all of the investments that they've made all within the bounds of what's legal. And so that's, you know, really where we came up in the space is we said, "Look, we're just going to do this the right way within the bounds of the law. We don't do black hat. we don't do gray hat and and things like that. Um, but I think around the time period that you're referencing, you know, it went from, you know, dozens of of brands doing this to hundreds of brands doing this. Mhm. Yeah, that would that would make sense. But isn't it a lot of times Papa Mole uh like that game Papa Mole? Because I I I know a brand that I have another podcast called the marketing misfits and we had a a lady on that's done very well with a light. She was a she was a eyelash technician and uh she was she had developed her own light to light up the the face because the lighting had shadows and stuff and she built this arc light and then when CO hit she had to shut down her salon and she's like what do I do? and she decided to manufacture this this light and put it out there and it's like a $500 light and now it's it's taken off and tattoo guys are using it and it has just taken off. But she's had tons of knockoffs. I think she said 137 or something Chinese cheap knockoffs. Yeah. She makes hers in the US and she says she has a full-time lawyer just dealing with just knocking them down. They'll get them taken off and then another one pops up and another one pops up. So is it in some cases where I mean it's it's I I I liken marketplaces to the the old mafia days of the Sopranos, you know, there's a lot of money in the garbage misses. So the the the bad comes in. So it seems like sometimes people just don't care. And so is it a constant battle? And some of these big firms are just all right, we're 3% of sales are devoted to IP protection or something. Yeah, I mean I think it is a constant battle. I mean, the brands that are out on the front foot on this stuff, they don't think about it as a project. They think about it more of like an ongoing program that's always in the background. Now, you mentioned you mentioned knockoffs. Now, we've we've covered a lot of different types of dis disruption. You have counterfeits, you have knockoffs, you have unauthorized sales, you have, you know, MAP violations if you're in the US or like Canada where you can do those types of things. Um, knockoffs, for example, are difficult. And I think that maybe brands do sort of feel that whack-a-ole type uh feeling because, you know, that really comes down to does the brand have patents, design patents and and things like that on the specific product itself because the knockoffs are under a different UPC, different as and things like that. they're just diluting sales of the of product. So, it's not, you know, so much on that specification and somebody saying, "I'ming this particular uh light that's made in the US, you know, like a counterfeitter. It's just we're copycatting that product and we're hoping that she has she has patents and IP on it." Um, that's one of the ways she's actually able to enforce. Yeah. But it's still it's a process and it costs money and time 100%. I mean it's it's just a uh you know obviously I mean this is how we earn a living but if you think about it you know you had everybody sort of understands supply chain control and all that but as as the e-commerce world has gotten where it is and the omni channel kind of ecosystem is the way it is meaning that everybody's interconnected you know what happens on Walmart impacts Amazon vice versa target you know impacts Amazon happens brick and mortar impacts what's happening on a marketplace like Amazon. The brands need to think about it in terms of um revenue disruption because your revenue is going to be disrupted multiple ways any given day and you've got to be able to a surface that to say is this meaningful you know financially a and b if so what is it that's actually happening to you know your your um your your uh contact there that had the lamp that's a knockoff issue. Then there's the counterfeiting on the fake supplements we were talking about. Then there's unauthorized. So I mean all of those are different pads uh that you need to to take. Yeah. What she's doing actually is she's created her own knockoff. So she hers is all made in the US out of uh metal and a lot of these cheaper ones are like 70 bucks or something and they're made out of plastic and they're not very good. So she created her own knockoff to compete at that price point. And then when they buy that, she tells them, "Hey, um, this is just a," she has a little story in there and he says, "If you, if you want the real one, uh, you know, I'll I'll knock a h 100red bucks off. I'll give you 79 bucks, you know, whatever you pay for this plus 20 bucks off and here here's how you get the real one." Um, and it's a it's a pretty effect pretty effective strategy. Yeah. But yeah, on the IP side, I know we I had someone on the podcast a month or two ago that helps with a little bit of IP stuff, and he said they had a case where a woman developed this charging thing. Plugs into the wall and I it somehow has some sort of patented technology of uh the way it lets you plug in different outlets or additional outlets. It's like an extender and a surge protector kind of thing. But and he said that she put it up on Amazon and crushed it. Uh but as soon as she put it up is it wasn't a difficult product to make. There's tons of knockoffs uh you know violating her IP and he said eventually after about two or three months that those guys actually got her shut down and she was she was the owner and the brand and he's like this is just a freaking mess. I mean, Amazon's become so big and there's I mean, I just saw I just had in my newsletter, Billion Dollar Sellers, a story where they've just deleted like um 50 million products off of off of the the website. 50 5 million. These are ones that have been sitting on there for two or three years and haven't made a sale. one, but just the scope there's there's something like 5 to 7 million, I think is what Helium 10 says, active products that are actually making making, you know, a regular sale here and there. Um, that's a lot of stuff to like babysit and keep on. So, it it's just so big. It's just becomes, you know, you hear cases of of really good stories and things happen really quick and then you are fighting the stuff for like 3 years. Oh, yeah. Uh, do you see that as well? I do 100%. I mean, and I think that it it just doesn't surprise or, you know, shock me in any way at all because, you know, they they provide the tools that they provide. They're good to a point, but beyond that, there's just a lot of self-help that a manufacturer, you know, whoever is selling the product that that cares about the sales is going to need to do. and you're just you're just bumping into this this you know widest selection, lowest price, open platform. Those are the those are the pillars and you know things that that sit outside of that just aren't the core focus from my experience of of the company. What about I think you know there's all this big tariff talk with what Trump was has been doing earlier this year and you know saying we need to get balanced and everything you know there there's a lot of good and some like I don't know about that uh parts of it but one of the things that's not discussed really that I think should be discussed is is the IP protection I know Trump brought it up you guys just steal our stuff and um which is is true a lot but you any Chinese seller can come and sell in the United States super easily easily. If I want to sell on Tik Tok shop, I have to have a registered person in the United States with their driver's license or their ID and prove that they're a US citizen and that that way there's a responsible person in the US. Same for Amazon Japan. Japan has a rule that you have to have a responsible person in Japan that if your product is faulty or whatever that you're importing that they can go after that's local. We don't have that here. Uh, so when when there's a guy when someone a company or person violates IP and and you guys are going out and fighting them, you're like, "Oh my gosh, this this is based in Shenzhen. There's no US you can't your investigators, you said you got a bunch of investigators. Your investigators can't figure out find any trace of any US-based uh stuff. What What do you do or what can you do uh to help mitigate that problem because there's nobody that's going to be liable other than just shut their account, get their account shut down?" Well, there's that. I mean there's a there's a whole you know um movement around around that what you just talked about. I mean you'll see brands going up filing suits in court usually under like an injunctive type approach you know so so forcing the courts to make quick decisions rather than some prolonged um you know litigation process. Now the goal in those would be to get the account shut down and then you know I think more importantly to be able to seize the the funds in the in the accounts to cover the damage. I mean, getting an account shut down is fine, but it just that's whackable. It just pops up under a different name of your different different account the next the next day. But actually getting to those funds and getting those seized by by the court orders is probably the the best bet. I mean, I think that hurts them the most. Uh when they can't pull out their $100,000 or whatever, they're like, uh, I'll go sell something else. Yeah. I mean, that's that's really what you're what you're going for. I mean, I think if these things are happening to you, you know, around the the Chinese kind of counterfeits and and things like that, you have three, if I if I have this right in my head, counting them up in my head, three options. Number one, like we just said, you know, pop the seller in court. You know, it's not it's not super, you know, you have to pay to be able to do that as a rank and so I don't want to like, oh, that's just, you know, like snapping your fingers. It's not. But that can be the quickest way to leverage the US legal system to punish those sellers in a way that How quick can that be done? An injunction? I I typically I know it's probably dependent on the court and stuff, but what's just like a rule of thumb you would tell a client like, "Oh, we can probably have an injunction in a month and two weeks and three months." Yes. There would be there would be a couple of um there'd be a couple phases. So, the first is often a what's called a you know, everybody heard hears the word TTRO or temporary restraining order. So that you kind of go into court on an emergency basis and you say, "Hey, look, this is happening to me. I need relief today or tomorrow." You know, that's a matter of days, one, two, three days before you get somebody to uh to rule on an interim basis on that. So they would come in, they would say, "Hey, the the judge would say, "Hey, yeah, it looks like you have a a valid point here. I'm going to go ahead and give you an a temporary order, temporary restraining order. take that to Amazon and say, "Okay, you know, this listing, we got to pause it here while the court sorts this out." Then the court would say, "Okay, now we're going to go to what's called a preliminary injunction." That might be 2 weeks, 3 weeks after the TTRO hearing. And that's where there's a more wholesome discussion of the issue. The other side will often, you know, show up if they're going to show up. And you kind of have it out like a little mini battle, little mini trial. And coming out of that, you'd get a more um permanent order then that you could take to like an Amazon and and have the, you know, attack the funds or whatever it is that you're about to do. So all that to say, I guess in a long windup way to say that you could probably be through that process in two to four weeks. Now, you said there was three things. So that's one of the the ways is to to go that quick court order type of stuff. Yeah, that's one. The other the other would be to um to involve the marketplace. Now, that's going to take, again, none of these, I don't want to act like any of these are like silver bullets or like light switches, but it'll be able to show in a compelling way the repeat pattern of infringement that is actually damaging to Amazon's reputation or to consumer safety, I think, would be the two things that are most, you know, in in our experience, most compelling to Amazon to urge them to implement some type of gating or other protections that we've talked about. The third, and this is not going to be, you know, uh, super attractive to a lot other than, you know, probably bigger brands with bigger budgets and things, would be to take the show to China and, um, figure out where the stuff's being made there and crack down on it there. Now, people go to prison for that there. It's just most don't go through the hoops of of going and going after it in in China. Yeah. There's that's a whole another legal system. I mean, a whole world. It's a whole another world. you there's lots of rules. You got to do it in the district where the factory is and there's all this this stuff and and China has different rules on trademarks where you can it's you can act I had someone this happened to a seller that I know they were in uh like four years ago in the middle of closing to Thorasio uh selling their business for three or four million bucks and the day the money was supposed to be wired and you know the deal closed their listing went down and completely went down and they're like what the heck and it and it turns out that someone had filed a complaint. A competitor had colluded with the factory uh in China. They all made their products at the same factory, colluded with the factory and actually got a trademark or something in China to actually block the export of this and then use that sent that into Amazon and Amazon just said, "Okay, sure. Well, um took it and took it down and they had to they were able to solve the problem. uh and the deal ended up going through, but it it was a hell for the uh seller for a while uh until they got that sorted out. But there's there's all kinds of little loopholes and and ways that with enough money involved, people will do a lot of crazy things. the very entrepreneurial people over there in in China. I mean, for all the sellers and brands, you know, that that are in your audience here, China has and other some other countries do too, but China has a first to file trademark system, meaning the first one that can make their way to the to the agency and say, I want to register Mark X is the one that's going to get it. You know, in the US, it would be sort of first to use and things like that. And so even if you haven't registered it officially, you can show that you're truly the one have it. China, it's a race. And so, you know, they'll see products that are gaining velocity and things like that and they'll just go and say, "Okay, are they registered here?" If not, boom, register it. And now you're in a you know, now you're in a fight like like you're like you just mentioned. Yeah. and and they can block I mean there's there's certain ways that they can actually block the export of that um under certain circumstances as as well. So that can just cause all kinds of problems. I mean chaos it's super cheap to get a trade I mean it's I mean super cheap's relative I guess but you know but it's not hard or particularly expensive to get your trademarks in China. So if you have any type of you know certainly global business or you have you know a product that you know you mentioned a few here that are that are taking off on like an Amazon from a you know velocity standpoint I would just go ahead and do it. I mean it's not you know it's it's a relatively easy box to check if you do it on the front. Now, do you guys help for brands enforce not just we talked about counterfeiting and uh duplicates and all these different things, but what about them just using the the marks? So, I'm I I'm an iPhone case guy, let's say, uh seller. Um um and I'm selling iPhone cases. And if I I think the way it's set up on Amazon, if I say um uh iPhone iPhone case XRT32XY, you know, whatever, um that's in my title, I can actually get shut down because it appears that that's an iPhone case by the way I've worded the title versus if I say it's an XR whatever 32P pink case for an iPhone, I'm okay compat or compatible with or Are you do you guys help enforce that kind of stuff for your brands as well? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they again those are those are I guess what I would call more um it that's kind of more check the box type stuff, you know, that can all be done in like a brand registry and and things like that. But uh but yeah, I mean you you start running into what is you know and it's beyond the the scope of what we're getting into here, but what's kind of fair use of a of a mark and what isn't. So you see the compatible widths a lot which you know is is allowed in certain instances versus saying this is an iPhone case blah blah blah which is confusing to people. um the test really, you know, it it all all of these things from a legal standpoint have their basis in some philosophy and and and the the wanted issue here would be, you know, the the whole purpose of a trademark is to educate consumers so consumers know what they're getting. And if you say, you know, iPhone in their title, but you don't have an iPhone branded case, it's something else. You know, that's confusing to people. So all of that is designed to protect consumer confusion and you know like the platforms will will allow for the enforcement of that stuff just because it's relatively cut and dry up on the and sometimes though these big law firm I mean they just have they got money and they got time and they got people on staff. Sometimes they're sitting around like okay instead of taking the afternoon off go find something to do. It seems like sometimes because I've had cases or uh in another business of mine, we dealt with uh we had a website and it was uh like u swimsuit models and stuff. Yeah. And one of these girls name her her stage name uh it wasn't her real name but her stage name was Alexis Winston. A l E X Us Winston. Uh and that's a that's a a woman's name. Uh and and Toyota came after us uh for saying that we're violating their trademark uh because of a Lexus and Lexus and this is damaging to their mark and and and all and we're not having anything to do with cars. Uh there's not even a picture of a car in in in uh any of the shots or whatever. But it was such a I mean it was it was so lawyered up letter that was like you're like we could fight this but we're going to spend and probably win it but we're going to spend 10 15 20 30 grand uh dealing with this and it's just just easier to just tell her change your name on the website. So sometimes there's those those kinds of things. And then I had another case back where we were using the word centerfold uh and in Google uh you know someone we were we were optimized back in the days where you could put uh you know keywords like in your meta tags and stuff like that and Google would actually recognize that and index you on it. Um this is early days. Uh, we had the word centerfold in there so people typing in, you know, like Playboy Centerfold or something would find our our website cuz we had models that were Playboy centerfolds and they came after us for for Violet cuz the word centerfold is actually a trademark term of Playboy. Nope. Okay. So, so they came after. So, do you see that happening on Amazon where people are maybe they're doing comparisons, uh, you know, let me compare my product to this big brand name product so that when someone types in, they get the the juice, you know, the Amazon associates those together, they're kind of leeching off the back and writing the the brand equity and goodwill of those brands and then in some cases they do very well. Is that something that is worth you guys fight on behalf of some of your clients as well? Yeah, 100%. I mean, we we deal with that. I I would say quite quite a bit. I mean, we would, you know, and and I mean, how we do stuff is is one thing, but I think for the audience, the the takeaway ought to be you need to be able to understand where you're losing real money. Not is there somebody out there that's using your name. Okay, that's that's annoying and potentially bad, but you've got to be able to quantify what's what the damage is or what the the impact would be because, you know, you know, you you've made several points throughout the discussion. You got 5, seven million products there. You know, it's a massive world that's just on Amazon. Then you've got every other marketplace out there. So, you know, seller, brand, whatever. You can't be flailing around reacting to everything. So the first thing I would say is you've got to get clear on what the impact is. So you know if somebody's used it and it's an easy fix and we go on like a brand registry and take it down fine. If it's going to be some more involved situation then I would sit there and say okay really how much revenue is flowing through that how disruptive is it? You know do we think we could pull it back into the authorized one and whatnot? Because time and budgets are time and budgets and you have to be able to stack those in a way that's going to be the best for the business overall. Yeah. Um, I I do that just as an example for those listening is, you know, a lot of you know that I have the Freedom Ticket course and I have a lot of content that I put out, BDSS content, and I sell that content. People will pay $1,000 to get the replays of some of the the trainings and stuff that we do. And then inevitably somebody somewhere uh usually in Eastern Europe will take that content, they'll buy it, they'll buy it with a stolen credit card, but I don't know that for like 3 weeks until it comes back. And then they download it all or screen capture it all and then they put it up on what's called a torrent to o r n t site and and then they resell it uh to people for you know instead of a thousand bucks it's 15 30 bucks. It's straight up stealing. They're stealing my my content and putting it up and and that's whack-a-ole. Uh and then some of the these servers are like in Russia or other places where it's difficult to actually get get them taken down. And so I used to worry about that and like oh my gosh I'm losing so much money. how many people are buying this. And now I'm just like, you know what? Someone that's going to go to those sites is not my customer anyway. They're never going to spend a thousand bucks. Um uh I can just you I can turn this around to a pause and tell tell the people that, uh are on my uh providing the content to teach it. I was like, "Look, yeah, we're going to have about 300 people 400 people pay the thousand and then we're going to have another 10,000 watch it. So you're getting you're getting a really good reach and uh so you're getting your word out." So it's not worth fighting. Uh, so I think that's something that a lot of people, but it took me a while to realize that. I think your point is is good about sellers need to focus on where where is what's moving the needle and what's not and don't worry about the little things. Yeah. The uh we always say impact over over activity. And you know, I think just for your for your audience, there's brand protection on the one hand and there's brand control. Okay. And if you look at the evolution of this space, you would say, okay, you know, late 90s, early 2000s, internet, you know, gaining gaining steam, e-commerce gaining steam, and you start seeing people care about, oh, did my images get ripped off and get put off over here, you know, did somebody take my content and and, you know, pirating it or or whatever. And so that industry came up. It was really kind of the first, you know, type in this in this space. But that industry depends on finding vi violations, serving them up to the brand and saying, "Hey, should we do something about this?" So, it's constantly trying to surface new things without so much of a of a of a um lens on is this commercially impactful. It's simply do I have something I can do something about? So then you start seeing like you know things like the map world and pricing world and things like that and people saying oh I'll go monitor the web and see who's breaking your price and I'll tell you this is in the US you can't do that in Europe um or in other regions of the world but that became a thing for a while now there's so much money flowing through these channels that brands are looking to say not just you know not how do protect my IP, but how do I control this whole experience? Okay. Um or if you know you're an exclusive seller on a brand, for example, you'd be you'd be thinking that way, too. So, it's been a bit of an evolution. Um and you just start to see more and more. Yeah, I get that there's a technical violation there, but I've got to be able to focus my attention and time on the things that are actually going to make money at the end of the day. How's AI affecting what you guys do? Yeah, I mean it's it's a big it's a big deal. Um, internally, you know, we have a ton of initiatives around around that. I mean, everybody, you know, what for us, what what's really exciting to us is that, you know, I believe we probably have the broadest uh set of data and data points and and things like that in this space. And so the the ability to layer the AI on top of all of that and just move faster than any human can move at surfacing recommendations for particular sellers. What's all of our experience around a particular type of disruption? You know, how do you do things in this region or that region? What's effective and what isn't across tens and tens of thousands of different actions? That's been very exciting to start to see that start to to come to light um for us. So, so that's that. And then, you know, we do it we use it a lot um to uh begin the process of doing things that would be more routine and wrote um that that people would have to have to do. But I just, you know, you sit there and you start to think about it's like almost like contemplating the the universe like where where's all this going to go? How's it all going to happen? I you just, you know, you just try to stay out on the front front foot on the front edge of it and and lean in and cuz I don't think anybody really knows. No, it's it's it's an amazing amazing time. Now, you've got a service though that you deal with a lot of big brands, the Fortune 500s, and a lot of those guys are clients of your firm, but you also have something that can help the the the smaller guy, right? Don't you have a it's a monitoring service of some sort or a uh can you tell me tell them a little bit about how that works? Yeah, I mean we, you know, I I think if you're a brand or, you know, a seller that that represents brands in in an author, I mean, we deal in the authorized world, not so much, you know, gray market sellers and things like that, but um the it I think what's most important is that you get on the right path. Now, there are different there are different sort of stages along that path. You've got everything from I just want to get my arms around what's going on and see do I know any of these people. Can I figure out where these problems are coming from, do some self-help and things like that. You know, you have some kind of volume enforcement just communicating with people saying, "Hey, look, I I don't really want you doing this." And then you have like the true legally backed programs, I think. Um, and that can all be sort of one journey. And so you know Vory's the the firm um owns precision e-cont control which is an ancillary business uh of Voris that we uh owned completely and they uh have a very robust tech platform and go out across marketplaces across retail sites you know understand everybody that's selling you know the brand's product the volumes the revenues the disruption you know from a from a advertised price compliance and all of those types of things. So, you know, brands will or, you know, seller will may may purchase that. You know, it's not particularly expensive and uh then they'll get the information and they'll try to work on it uh a bit themselves. So, that would be sort of like the you know what maybe a a smaller kind of scrappy brand would would want to do or seller would want to do. So, if we you had to leave uh the audience here with a couple words of wisdom or advice when it comes to dealing with uh brand protection, IP, that kind of things, what what would you say they they should uh take away from this and and keep in mind? So I think that, you know, whether you have a brand or you're out there, you know, selling brands in an authorized way, your success commercially will rest fundamentally on how much control you have. Uh, you know, you see, we were both at the same conference a couple weeks ago. You see a lot of focus on this e-commerce revenue equation. Your revenue is traffic times conversion times price. Each of those variables rests on how much control do you have. If you don't have buy box, you can't run your ads. You can't run your ads. You can't drive traffic. Can't drive traffic. You're not going to convert. You know, you pricing is disrupted. You know, you get into an erosion situation. And so I think that it's still in the very early innings of branded manufacturers and the sellers of those products realizing that you can have all the phenomenal ad strategies and content strategies and whatnot, but if you lack that control, that revenue equation will will suffer. And so that's that's kind of the takeaway that, you know, I think I'd like to leave your audience with. than the fact that a marketplace like an Amazon isn't going to help you with that. You know, they may give you some tools that that are useful around the edges, but the guts of your success on that issue will depend on what you do yourself. Awesome. Well, Darren, if people wanted to reach out uh to either you or to the firm or whatever, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah. Um, couple ways. Uh, you know, I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. You can find me there, Darren Garcia. E A R E N G A R C I A uh you know connect with me there. There's a ton of content and things. There's also uh the the group's micro site within the Boris site. So that would be www.boresbcontrol.com. Uh and then my email is dsgarcia.com. So those would be probably the best ways there. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and uh sharing today. It's been great. No, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. It was great great seeing you out there and uh yeah, I'm sure we'll bump into each other somewhere on the road here coming months. I'm sure we will. Regular listener of the AMM podcast, you notice over the last few months there's been quite a bit of uh discussion about IP protection and what to do to protect your brand uh with different uh guest uh including today's guest Darren. It's because I think it's a a pretty important topic that a lot of people are overlooking and just not handling the best way they can and it's becoming more and more of an issue as the marketplace is uh continue to grow and to mature uh and continue spitting off serious cash. So hopefully today you got some good uh uh insights and get some good things to think about uh when it comes to protecting your brand. Next week we'll be back with another amazing guest here on the AMM podcast. Remember, new episodes every single Thursday. Hit that share button if you like this episode. Uh, be sure to like it, subscribe to the channel, and check out my newsletter at billiondollscellers.com. billiondollarellers.com. Free newsletter every Monday and Thursday. It's like a free $25,000 year mastermind straight into your inbox. Take care everybody and we'll see you again next week. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]