Q&A: I’ve received a patent infringement take down request, what should I do?

Chances are? Nothing.

Right around 4th quarter I receive a number of fake patent infringement letters telling me that my product is a fake, which is insanely ironic and annoying.

Here’s an email I received through buyer-seller messaging at the end of October.

Here’s a more convincing one I received directly to my email, a few weeks later.   It even comes from a very real seeming Amazon address (I haven’t bothered to check to see if they’re spoofing it or what. Or maybe the Seller Performance Team knows it’s not an actionable complaint but passes the message along)

The thing is, I know this product doesn’t infringe on any patents, so I simply ignored them.

Why would anyone send fake cease and desist letters?  Because a lot of people won’t know any better, and there’s money at stake.

Sales for this product were pretty great yesterday, I can understand why someone wanted less competition


In summary. Don’t infringe on people’s patents, but don’t believe someone just because they’re telling you that you’re infringing on someone’s patents.

Amazon will take your listing down if you _actually_ infringe, they don’t need your help to do it.

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