Amazon has been cleared in a legal battle with beauty conglomerate Coty after it was accused of violating the licencing terms for its Davidoff brand.
The German arm of the brand owner took the online retailer to court in an effort to stop the sale of its Davidoff Hot Water fragrance via its platform Marketplace to third-party sellers.
Coty claimed the sale of the product on Amazon's Marketplace breached its trademark rights, as it holds the licence for the brand in the EU.
But the German Federal Court of Justice said in order for there to be an infringement, the company providing the storage must also pursue the purchase of the products.
It ruled ‘unequivocally’ that the two Amazon sites concerned had not offered the goods for sale or put them on the market ‘and that the third-party seller alone pursued that aim’.
To date, Amazon sells millions of products via its Marketplace site, but has come under fire from companies that claim it needs to take more responsibility for the products stored online.
It has faced criticism in the past for enabling the sale of unsafe and counterfeit goods.
According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal in 2019, it found more than 4,000 products that were either mislabeled, banned or declared unsafe by federal agencies were available to purchase on its sites.
The report also revealed the sale of medications that lacked proper health risk warnings.
