Dive Brief:
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Amazon’s practice of showing similar watches to a military-style timepiece from Multi Time Machine Inc. doesn’t violate Multi Time Machine’s trademark, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
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Amazon doesn’t sell the MTM Special Ops military-style wristwatch, but similar watches appear in its search results when shoppers go to its site looking for it. The watch appears in the results without any indication that it specifically is not available through Amazon or its Marketplace.
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A federal judge had ruled in Amazon’s favor when Los Angeles-based MTM sued in 2011, arguing the search result led shoppers to buy the alternatives rather than seeking out its watch elsewhere. But the 9th Circuit this summer ruled that MTM's lawsuit should be allowed to proceed.
Dive Insight:
Amazon’s search capability is one of the top in retail, providing consumers detailed information on products, including reviews on its own vast assortment of products.
But, in what MTM clearly saw as a bait and switch, it’s also able to show products it doesn’t sell, along with similarly detailed information and reviews on alternatives that it or its sellers do offer. All that has shoppers using Amazon even more than search engines. In fact, more (44%) shoppers search for products on Amazon than on search engines (34%) or retailers’ sites (21%), according to research from big-data marketing company BloomReach, conducted by consumer research firm Survata. That’s a big jump from three years ago, when Forrester Research pegged Amazon’s search at 30%.
That’s confounding for retail marketers, but it’s especially galling to those companies whose products aren’t available at Amazon. But its detailed search results not only may help sell product alternatives, they apparently also helped protect the retailer in court, according to the ruling.
"Because Amazon’s search results page clearly labels the name and manufacturer of each product offered for sale and even includes photographs of the items, no reasonably prudent consumer accustomed to shopping online would likely be confused as to the source of the products," the panel majority said in a 2-1 opinion.
That means that Amazon can continue to bring up alternatives to those products without fear. Neither Amazon nor Multi Time Machine Inc. commented to Reuters regarding the decision.