What causes Amazon's Best Seller Rank (BSR) listings to suddenly become inactive, sometimes leading to the collapse of entire category front pages? Recently, Amazon's gift category experienced an unprecedented "cleaning" operation, with numerous sellers having their listings removed due to copyright infringement complaints, resulting in significant financial losses. This article examines the incident, revealing its causes, impacts, and potential countermeasures while exploring the challenges Amazon faces in intellectual property protection.
I. Incident Overview: Widespread Listing Deactivations in Gift Category
In late October 2023, just before the peak e-commerce season, Amazon's gift category was hit by a large-scale malicious complaint campaign. Many sellers reported their BSR listings suddenly becoming inactive—colloquially called "going to the dogs"—rendering products unsellable. According to seller Li Zhifeng, over 70% of front-page listings were affected, with individual sellers losing hundreds of thousands of yuan daily. This was not an isolated incident but rather a category-wide phenomenon, marking the first time the gift category experienced such extensive malicious attacks.
Unlike previous sporadic attacks involving prohibited keywords, this event featured coordinated copyright infringement complaints targeting product images. The complainants created cloud storage accounts to mass-upload sellers' images, then filed copyright complaints with Amazon, resulting in widespread listing removals. The broad scope, aggressive complaints, and 14-day restoration period caused severe financial and operational difficulties for affected sellers.
II. Impact: Plummeting Sales and Ranking Drops
Listing deactivations immediately reduced sales volume. Li Zhifeng reported that his deactivated BSR listing typically generated about 200 daily orders worth approximately $4,000. Combined with another affected listing, his daily sales losses reached $5,000. More concerning was the subsequent ranking decline, which would require additional marketing resources to recover even after the 14-day restoration period.
The timing—just before the holiday season—intensified psychological pressure on sellers. Many had anticipated peak sales periods only to face unexpected suspensions, disrupting business plans and confidence. Some worried the incident might affect their entire seasonal performance.
III. Root Causes: Weak Image Protection and Rampant Malicious Complaints
The core issue was inadequate image copyright protection. Most affected sellers had created their product photos independently but hadn't pursued patents. Li explained why sellers avoid image patents:
1. Frequent Image Updates: Product images require regular updates based on market trends and product iterations, making patents impractical.
2. Time and Cost Constraints: Image patent applications can take about a year, while some products have short lifecycles that may expire before approval.
3. Product Lifecycle Limitations: Many products become obsolete before any patent would take effect.
Without copyright protection, sellers' images are vulnerable to theft and malicious complaints. Complainants exploit Amazon's reporting system, which allows listings to be removed based solely on cloud storage links without substantial evidence, encouraging abuse.
Even after deactivation, attackers continued sabotaging listings by adding prohibited keywords or false information to permanently disable them. This behavior not only causes financial harm but disrupts market integrity.
IV. Historical Context: Not the First Attack on Gift Category
The gift category has faced previous attacks. Earlier this year, multiple sellers reported listing deactivations, including Li himself. Previously, attacks primarily came from Vendor Central (VC) giants who altered sellers' keywords, product pages, or added prohibited terms like "pesticide" or "N95" to trigger removals.
Compared to current events, past attacks were smaller in scale, limited in scope, and featured faster restoration times. Sellers could typically reactivate listings quickly by removing problematic content. The current incident's broader impact and prolonged 14-day resolution period creates greater damage.
V. Amazon's Response and Challenges
When facing mass complaints, sellers immediately contacted Amazon but were told to wait 14 days for resolution. Many believe Amazon's complaint system is flawed, arguing it should require substantive evidence like copyright certificates rather than accepting cloud storage links as proof.
Li suggested Amazon implement more reasonable measures, such as comparing listing creation dates with complainants' upload timestamps to assess infringement likelihood. Faster review processes could also minimize seller losses.
However, Amazon faces significant challenges. As the world's largest e-commerce platform, it processes countless infringement complaints daily, requiring substantial resources. Balancing IP protection with avoiding false positives remains an ongoing dilemma.
VI. Identifying the Perpetrators
Sellers speculate about who orchestrated the attacks. The scale suggests the culprits may be gift category competitors seeking market share by eliminating rivals. However, no noticeable sales surges among surviving listings have been observed, making motives unclear.
Another theory suggests the attacks aim to disrupt market order rather than directly boost any competitor. Possible motivations include business retaliation, unfair competition, or other malicious objectives.
Regardless, the attacks harm seller interests and undermine Amazon's fair competition principles. Sellers hope Amazon will strengthen oversight and punish bad-faith complainants to restore platform integrity.
VII. Seller Countermeasures and Lessons Learned
Affected sellers are implementing various strategies to mitigate losses:
1. Contacting Amazon Support: Quickly reaching out to understand deactivation reasons and submitting evidence for faster restoration.
2. Listing Audits: Carefully reviewing images, keywords, and descriptions to ensure compliance.
3. Peer Communication: Collaborating with fellow sellers to share experiences and strategies.
4. Legal Action: Pursuing legal remedies for significant damages.
5. Strengthening Copyright Protection: Registering image copyrights to prevent theft.
Sellers must also reflect on their IP protection shortcomings to avoid future targeting.
VIII. Improving Amazon's IP Protection Mechanisms
The incident reveals weaknesses in Amazon's IP protection that need addressing:
1. Higher Complaint Thresholds: Requiring tangible evidence like copyright/patent certificates.
2. Stricter Reviews: More thorough complaint evaluations to prevent false positives.
3. Faster Processing: Accelerating resolution timelines to reduce seller harm.
4. Appeal Systems: Establishing formal channels to contest complaint outcomes.
5. Punishing Abuse: Implementing strict penalties for malicious complainants.
IX. IP Protection on Other E-Commerce Platforms
Other platforms have developed IP protection measures:
• Alibaba's IP Protection Platform (IPP): Provides rights holders with streamlined reporting tools and uses big data to detect violations.
• eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program: Lets rights holders directly remove infringing listings and penalize violators.
• Shopify's DMCA Process: Allows rights holders to report infringing content for removal.
X. Conclusion and Future Outlook
Amazon's gift category crisis highlights e-commerce platforms' IP protection challenges. Malicious complaints harm sellers and disrupt fair competition. Amazon must refine its systems by raising complaint standards, enhancing reviews, speeding resolutions, creating appeals, and punishing abuse to foster a safer, fairer marketplace.
Sellers must simultaneously strengthen their IP protections. Only through collaborative effort can a healthy e-commerce ecosystem emerge.
As e-commerce grows, IP protection will become increasingly vital. Platforms must innovate to develop more effective safeguards, supporting sellers and ensuring sustainable industry growth.