Amazon 3rd party seller shipped me a book in US which clearly say &quot;For sale in Indian subcontinent only&quot; What legal options do I have if an Amazon 3rd party seller shipped me a book in US which clearly says &quot;For sale in Indian subcontinent only&quot; ? I'd like to get a US edition book and get some penalties enforced on the seller who is selling illegal items in US. I ordered a new book in US from a 3rd party seller on Amazon.com, to be shipped to a US address.
First, the seller has not violated copyright law by selling you this book. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc. provides the precedent. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Sale doctrine applies to &quot;grey market&quot; imports of books, so buying a book cheaply in another country and then shipping it to the USA is entirely legal, regardless of what the publisher would like. The court wrote: Putting section numbers to the side, we ask whether the “first sale” doctrine applies to protect a buyer or other lawful owner of a copy (of a copyrighted work) lawfully manufactured abroad. Can that buyer bring that copy into the United States (and sell it or give it away) without obtaining permission to do so from the copyright owner? Can, for example, someone who purchases, say at a used bookstore, a book printed abroad subsequently resell it without the copyright owner’s permission? In our view, the answers to these questions are, yes. Wikipedia also has an article on the case. As for your recourse against the seller, this would seem to be very limited unless they specifically promised you the US edition, or the content is materially different between US and Indian editions. You don't say what kind of book this is. Textbooks typically have identical content. Fiction and other entertainment books generally have local idioms and terminology changed (e.g. &quot;pavement&quot; versus &quot;sidewalk&quot;) but will otherwise be the same. You might be able to claim that this is a material difference, but its likely to be difficult.
Private carriers typically (and UPS in particular) only have a contractual obligation to the person who pays to send the package. Unless you're the one directly paying UPS to deliver the package you have no legal recourse because you're not a party to the "contract of carriage." It does seem like you're suffering due to contractual and operational failures of UPS, but your recourse is against the merchant you paid for the goods, because you also paid them for delivery. The merchant has recourse against UPS under their contract if they want to pursue it. Legally: UPS does not have a monopoly on shipping, and their contractual duty is only to their customer. The best you can do is encourage those from whom you purchase to aggressively claim against UPS for delays, and to use other carriers when possible.
A simple EULA does not absolve you from legal responsibility. The law that you need to be acquainted with, if you are dealing with the US (i.e. might be sued in the US), is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, in particular Title II, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act which states the "safe harbor" provisions. Aspects of DMCA safe harbor are covered in many Law SE questions. In essence, you have to provide a way for rights holders to complain that someone has infringed their copyright on there site, and you have to take down allegedly infringing material: and there are a number of legal formalities to attend to in doing this. The main point is that you can't just ignore the problem and hope it goes away, and you can't just say it is not your responsibility, which is what a simple EULA does. To be protected, you need a "designated agent" where complainers can contact you. You provide the information online (as well as stating the DMCA policy, which can be in the EULA), and also register that information with the Copyright office (online). The complaint has to be in writing, and most of the burden is on the author of the complaint, but you still have to be sure that the complaint is legally conforming. The complaint has to say what was infringed (e.g. the URL), the identity of the protected content (title of the book, for instance), and provide the complainer's signature and contact information. It also requires the complainer to say that they have a good faith belief that the material is illegally copied (no permission, and not otherwise allowed by law), and a perjury statement that the foregoing is accurate and authorized by the copyright holder. When you have a conforming notice, you must "expeditiously" remove / disable the infringing material (there is no definition of "expeditious"), notify the user, then wait for a proper counter-claim (same general form as the take-down claim but where the user denies the posting the material was illegal. If you get a counter-claim, you notify the alleged copyright owner and wait for them to file suit in 10 days. If they don't do that, you restore the material. Here is a sample complaint, and a sample counter notice. Also, this document (look for the download tab) reorganizes the legal language so that requirements are put in logical order and not randomly scattered throughout the US Code.
Your terms and conditions must comply with the laws in: Your jurisdiction (California) Your customer's jurisdiction (each of the US states, Canadian provinces and ultimately countries and sub-jurisdictions in Europe) If they do they will generally be enforceable; if they don't then they will not be enforceable and you may be exposing yourself to civil and criminal sanctions. While not immediately relevant to you, Australian Consumer Law has such sanctions to goods sold into Australia from anywhere in the world; I am not familiar with other jurisdictions. With respect to your comment that you will not accept returns or refunds, this would expose you to potential fines in Australia of $220,000 for an individual or $1,100,000 for a corporation - under Australian Consumer Law returns and refunds are a consumer right. I strongly suspect that most of the jurisdictions you are selling into would take a similar position. A general "catch-all" like "to the extent permitted by law" may reduce the risk of being prosecuted but it would not eliminate it entirely. Again, in Australia, the provision is that you must not engage in deceptive and misleading conduct - merely suggesting that you will not give a refund even with the limitation above - may still be deemed "deceptive and misleading" if the court feels that a reasonable consumer might assume that they are not entitled to a refund. You need professional legal advice on this.
The reason that you are being asked to comply with a US law is because PayPal, a US company, is required to comply with US laws. If you do not comply, it is likely that they will be non-compliant and subject to sanctions. For more background, FATCA reporting is used to identify businesses that a company does business with. In this scenario PayPal does business with you, 'Kenorb Inc', and so must prove to the regulatory agencies that you are not a US based company, hence the need for the W-8BENE. In a similar way - people from other countries cannot simply ignore UK law when dealing with your business. As for your quotes - they are not contradictory.
This is a case of nominative use. In general, it is fine to use trademarks to refer to the products trademarked, provided that a reasonable person would not be confused about who creates or provides the product, and would not think that the trademark holder has endorsed, authorized, or sponsored the book or other product that refers to the trademark. It is common to include a disclaimer stating that trademarks are owned by specific parities, and the author or publisher is not claiming them, nor claiming any endorsement or affiliation. Such a disclaimer makes the nominative function of the trade mark use clearer, and would make it harder for the trademark owner to prevail in an infringement suit. See This law.se question and answer for more info.
No. You have to ask for specific permission to send marketing emails, and can't make it a condition of making a purchase since marketing emails are clearly not necessary for that. When accepting the terms you need a separate tick box for marketing emails, and it must be unticked by default (opt-in).
It may be illegal under product labelling regulations that apply to that kind of product (or under a general deceptive trade practices act), but even then, only if you are interpreting the numbers, whose meaning is not clearly spelled out, correctly. But, to be actionable as fraud it must, among other things, be a misrepresentation as to a material fact (which if the goods, such as cordless drills, are not perishable it probably isn't) and the recipient of the misrepresentation must have justifiably relied upon the misrepresentation (which is necessary not true in the case of a representation that it was made in December 2018 on a product sold no later than July of 2018). It is also not entirely clear that this is a "made on" date. It could refer, for example, to the the twelfth batch or lot or shipment of products made in 2018, and not to the month of December, or it could refer to a product made in 2018 at factory number 12. @NateEldredge in the comments also makes the plausible observation that it could be a week number which is a common system in manufacturing which would put it in a more reasonable March 2018 time frame. You probably shouldn't do anything, because you haven't been harmed by this cryptic string of numbers embossed on the product, and even if you were, your damages would not be worth the time or money involved to pursue it as anything other than part of a class action lawsuit.