Comment by saghm
15 hours ago
"Fundamentally fine"? How do you think Amazon would react to someone scraping their marketplace and posting the inventory under their own service? Unless the answer is "they'd be perfectly happy to have to opt out individually in each case", that's a double standard. The only reason they wouldn't actually need to care about this is because they have comparatively inexhaustive resources to be able to shut this sort of thing down with a sledgehammer without having to risk meaningful consequences rather than what they're telling sellers to do, which is to ask nicely to stop being included, and that's a sign of an unhealthy ecosystem where competition is non-existent.
As someone else noted, Amazon sent a cease and desist letter when someone tried more-or-less the same thing on them (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-perplex...), so it's absolutely a double standard, yes.
But that doesn't answer the question of what rights vendors actually have here (much less what rights they should have).
The fact that Amazon even allows vendors to request de-listing (and the fact that Amazon does it promptly) would suggest that Amazon's lawyers have recommended that they do this (and that it's likely for a good reason).
We, as non-lawyers, may never know. But they obviously know something... Enough to spook them.
copyright on pictures, text descriptions, use of their brand names?
I have bought items from AliExpress which somehow arrived from an Amazon warehouse, unexpectedly quickly. The price was right and I have no other complaints, so I think it does happen.
Any fulfilled can use FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) for their own inventory and their own retail front end. Amazon charges storage and shipping fees and the items do not need to be for sale on Amazon.com.
https://sell.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon