ECJ ruling: Mail order company Amazon liable for third-party trademark infringements

Louboutin had accused Amazon of unlawfully using its trademark for goods without its consent. The Court confirmed that Amazon, as the operator of the marketplace, can indeed be regarded as the user of the trademark if a reasonably well-informed and reasonably attentive user of the website has the impression that Amazon is the operator marketing the infringing goods. However, the existence of a trademark infringement is a case-by-case decision and therefore a matter for the court dealing with the case in question. According to the ECJ, the decisive factor for the assessment is whether Amazon uses a uniform method of presentation on the website by “simultaneously displaying its own advertisements and those of third-party sellers and displaying its own logo on all of these advertisements”.