Amazon has no “direct responsibility” for products that third-party companies sell on its platform without copyright, the European Union’s Attorney General said Thursday in a case involving shoe designer Christian Louboutin.
Louboutin, famous for designing high-heeled shoes for women with red outer soles and whose trademark is registered in the European Union, filed two lawsuits against Amazon in Belgium and Luxembourg, accusing it of advertising on its website products with a sign identical to its shoes. that have been marketed without your consent.
Judges in both countries have asked the EU Court of Justice whether Amazon can be held directly liable for trademark infringement committed by a third party using its platform.
In his opinion published today, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar stated that “an Internet user’s perception” that he is “normally informed and reasonably attentive” when entering an e-commerce website “is a necessary element in determining whether the operator of that platform” is responsible for the use of a brand by other companies.
It added that “although third-party seller and Amazon offerings are presented uniformly on the e-marketplace and all include the Amazon Big Name Reseller logo, the ads always specify whether these products are sold by third parties. sellers or directly by Amazon”.
Therefore, it concluded that “the mere fact that the advertisements of Amazon and those of third-party sellers coexist cannot lead a normally informed and reasonably attentive Internet user to perceive the signs included in the advertisements of third-party sellers as an integral part of the Amazon business communication.
And neither with respect to the “complementary services of assistance, storage and shipping of products that bear a sign identical to a brand, with respect to which Amazon has also actively contributed in the preparation and publication of offers”. The opinions of the Advocate General are not binding but usually coincide with the sentences that the CJEU ends up issuing.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
