Back in Business: Amazon Infringement Report Reversed in Just 5 Weeks

Key facts

• An Amazon Infringement Report removed our client's flagship product listing, stopping sales and brand growth.
• We challenged the validity of the other party's IP rights. This led to a resolution within 5 weeks, restoring the listing.

“Tozers' advice was spot on. Their initial guidance wasn't what I expected; it wasn't the way I was thinking. My angle was to try to get Amazon to respond but Tozers' suggested action plan was that we needed to prove the other party's design registration was invalid. The communication was very good, even late in the evening. I would definitely use Tozers again – I'll be straight on the phone.”

About our client

Our client sells premium automotive products for car enthusiasts. The online business has been growing slowly over the last three years, largely through Amazon, which delivers the majority of sales. Their best-selling product is a high performance micro-fibre drying towel. This has been integral to building the brand, achieving a top five listing on Amazon.

The challenge

Our client received an Infringement Report from Amazon in March 2025, regarding a design right compliant about the micro-fibre drying towel. The product listing was removed.

This had a significant impact on our client's business. Amazon is his primary selling platform, delivering approximately 95% of sales for the drying towel. Once the complaint was raised, the sales dropped to zero as the listing was no longer visible to the public.

Our client unsuccessfully tried to resolve the issue himself, taking online legal advice and speaking to an Amazon expert. However, he ended up in contact with the same department at Amazon, who simply reiterated the information in the original notification.

He was left in a seemingly impossible situation where he either needed the compliant to be retracted (but with no incentive for the complainant to do so) or to obtain a court order in his favour, which could take up to 18 months.

In the meantime, he was unable to sell his key product, hindering his cash flow. This also wiped out the many months of progress he had made in building his visibility on the Amazon.

How Tozers helped

Our client contacted Tozers seeking specialist IP legal advice. He was initially determined that Amazon would respond to his message disputing the infringement, as he felt the situation was unjust. Our team took a different approach. We advised the best course of action was to challenge the validity of the complainant's design registration in an early letter.

We undertook an investigation, finding evidence on social media that the complainant had been selling their product since 2019. When we checked the IPO registration, however, it showed the design had not been registered within 12 months of being in the public domain – a fundamental requirement in design law.

We wrote to the complainant to establish this, confirming what we had already discovered and setting out our client’s claim regarding registered design invalidation proceedings.

During correspondence, the complainant indicated he would withdraw the Infringement Report and stipulated some brief terms of agreement. While our client had a strong case for invalidation, he was also pragmatic about the benefits of resolving the situation as swiftly as possible with an early settlement.

He was prepared to compromise but had a large amount of existing stock remaining. We discussed different ways forward, set out the preferred option to the other party and reached a commercial settlement that would allow our client to recommence trading on Amazon without delay.

The complaint was resolved within five weeks of contacting Tozers and our client’s key product listing was restored.

We were able to challenge the report effectively and within a short timeframe thanks to the expertise of our specialist IP team. Solicitor Jessica Whittick previously worked as an intellectual property analyst for an international brand protection firm, bringing a combination of legal insight, investigative precision and deep technical knowledge of IP law to the matter.

Jessica comments, “Amazon Infringement Reports are a growing risk for businesses and the options to respond directly to the Report are restrictive. There are several ways forward, however these are often overlooked with the stress of your trading activities being halted. The key benefit of agreeing a settlement is that parties have the flexibility to discuss resolutions which the Court would not be able to order. In this case, the complainant did not have a validly registered intellectual property right and our robust correspondence aided a constructive dialogue, enabling our client to settle the claim without setting foot in Court.”

What our client says

“It was a business decision to compromise. Waiting 18 months for a court order would have killed the product on Amazon and I had nearly £10K of stock remaining. We didn't have the suggestion of a deal until Tozers identified hard evidence that the complainant’s registration was invalid. He was quite adamant until then but, with Tozers involved, the clout we threw at him was much stronger. Now, hopefully we'll get back on track and, in six months’ time, we'll look back and think it was a good education on how to deal with things.”