The Trump Organization is deploying an ‘extraordinary’ legal strategy to go after Amazon and eBay sellers allegedly peddling Trump merch dupes

Retail·Donald TrumpThe Trump Organization is deploying an ‘extraordinary’ legal strategy to go after Amazon and eBay sellers allegedly peddling Trump merch dupesBy Sasha RogelbergBy Sasha RogelbergReporterSasha RogelbergReporterSasha Rogelberg is a reporter and former editorial fellow on the news desk at Fortune, covering retail and the intersection of and culture.SEE FULL BIO The Trump Organization is suing e-commerce marketplace vendors for allegedly selling unauthorized Trump merchandise.Alex Wong—Getty ImagesThe Trump Organization, owned by Donald Trump, is suing vendors on e-commerce platforms Amazon and eBay for allegedly selling counterfeit Trump merchandise

The company is deploying the controversial strategy of a Schedule A case that allows it to potentially sue hundreds of sellers while avoiding quickly accumulating filing fees

The Trump Organization is warning sellers there’s only one place to get Trump merch, deploying a controversial legal strategy to crack down on alleged counterfeiters

The conglomerate owned by Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against unnamed merchandise sellers in a U.S

District Court in Florida on Friday, claiming merchants across multiple online platforms Walmart, Amazon, and eBay sold “inferior imitations” of cups, baby clothing, T-shirts, and other items bearing the Trump trademark. “Defendants are imperly advertising, marketing, and/or selling unauthorized and illegal ducts infringing upon at least a portion of plaintiffs’ Trump trademarks,” the complaint said. “By selling counterfeit ducts that purport to be genuine and authorized ducts using the Trump trademarks … defendants cause confusion and deception in the marketplace.” Selling Trump merch has ven to be lucrative to some, with 9,000 Amazon sellers raking in nearly $140 million in revenue in the months leading up to the election, according to data from e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend

Controversy in legal strategy The Trump Organization’s decision to sue these sellers in his particular manner has raised questions from legal experts

The conglomerate has opted for a Schedule A case, a legal trend that has snowballed in ity among some trademark lawyers in recent decades, as it allows the plaintiff to, in many cases, skirt fees and generally generate chunks of change from settlements, according to legal experts

As e-commerce giants beef up their third-party marketplaces, legal concerns over dupe sales have wise grown, and plaintiffs may want to cast a wide net to hold accountable alleged infringers

Un many trademark infringement cases, Schedule A cases allow the plaintiff to sue a wide swath of defendants without having to name particular entities—such as the names of specific online sellers—under the auspices they are foreign vendors

This blanket allows the plaintiff to avoid paying expensive filing fees per entity it is suing

Schedule A cases also give significant power to the discretion of the judge

In many instances, a boilerplate complaint will outline allegations against counterfeiters, who have committed the highest level of trademark infringement, according to Sarah Fackrell, a fessor of intellectual perty law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law

Part of this strategy is rhetorical, in order to argue to the judge that these anonymous alleged “bad actors” should be held accountable, she told Fortune

At that point, a judge can decide to freeze the accounts of online purveyors of the alleged counterfeit merchandise—without telling the sellers they have been sued by the plaintiff

Often equipped with few means of acquiring legal aid after being served, these sellers typically choose to settle with the plaintiff rather than hire lawyers to fight the case. “As you might imagine, when courts grant this, you wake up one day and your Amazon account is frozen, and you don’t know what’s going on,” Fackrell told Fortune. “That creates an … incredible incentive to either settle or just default, depending on how much money you have or your model.” According to Fackrell, dozens to up to 1,000 sellers can be sued in these cases. “So this is the game,” she said. “This is really extraordinary

While some of these sellers could be sophisticated counterfeiters, others are ly not, Fackrell said

But because of the blanket body of defendants created through Schedule A, the legal system doesn’t always sufficiently differentiate between these parties, punishing smaller vendors in the same way as those running large-scale operations. “There’s a lot of reasons to be concerned due cess, and these defendants kind of getting railroaded, whether or not they did anything wrong,” Fackrell said

The woman told media outlets she found the legal notification in her junk folder, but missed the deadline to respond, as she was in the hospital, and was then ordered to pay statutory damages

Other sellers included in the lawsuit appeared to be larger operations out of Asia

Combs apologized after finding out the litigation and offered to help pay for the woman’s medical bills

Why is the Trump Organization suing now? Since many of these cases are under seal, it’s difficult to discern how much money plaintiffs are able to make from Schedule A, though Fackrell said some lawyers have admitted it’s a strategy to bring in some cash. “At least some of these plaintiffs are sold on this litigation format as an alternative revenue source,” she said

The specific reason behind why the Trump Organization would file a trademark infringement lawsuit isn’t , Amy Landers, an intellectual perty law fessor at Drexel University’s Thomas R

Kline School of Law, told Fortune

Some brands don’t feel compelled to pursue copyright-infringement litigation against alleged unauthorized merchandise sellers because the merch can effectively act as free advertising, she said

Brands Chanel and Louis Vuitton may conversely be more litigious, Landers posited, as luxury firms want to prevent their brands from becoming generic and meaningless

But for the Trump Organization, unauthorized merchandise has been manufactured for more than a decade, raising questions why the conglomerate would choose now to take legal action against these alleged infringers. “If other people are selling merch and they didn’t authorize it, eventually they might look generic,” Landers said. “But this is so counterintuitive to me, because … there really wasn’t enforcement until now

The Trump Organization did not respond to Fortune’s request for

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