Several American intellectual property law firms specializing in counterfeiting big brands sued China Merchants for trademark infringement in the United States on behalf of these counterfeiting brands, and applied to the local court to freeze their Yi Bei accounts or PAYPAL accounts. Their usual practice is: first, collect the product introduction and publicity information of China Merchants on the Internet as evidence materials, contact China Merchants as a buyer, then ask the seller to provide the PAYPAL account after expressing the purchase intention, and then file a lawsuit in the US court to apply for a temporary injunction to freeze the funds in the PAYPAL account. Subsequently, if China Merchants does not go to the United States to respond to the lawsuit, after the default judgment takes effect, the frozen funds in the PAYPAL account will be allocated to the trademark owner as compensation for trademark infringement. The situation is as follows: 1. If you choose to go to the United States to answer the lawsuit, if the act of counterfeiting other people's trademarks is true, because the laws of all States in the United States stipulate high fines for infringement of intellectual property rights, including trademark rights, the money in China Merchants PAYPAL account is not enough to pay compensation, and it is almost impossible to recover some or all of the funds. 2. If you give up responding to the lawsuit, some sellers will give up the lawsuit because the deduction is not much, and even if the settlement is made, the lawyer's fee is high, but this not only means that the seller's account is blocked and the money is taken away, but also means that the seller is likely to be continuously held accountable. In the previous cases, the court not only asked the defendant seller to pay huge infringement compensation, but also authorized GBC law firm to continue to deduct money from every Paypal or other financial account related to the defendant seller that was later discovered until the compensation was paid. Unless the seller changes a new account, even if the imitation is not sold afterwards, the money in the seller's Paypal account will be deducted. 3. Choose to settle with the plaintiff. The so-called reconciliation usually leaves only 10%~50% for the seller, which is not much compared with the funds in the previous account. At the same time, the so-called reconciliation is often that the seller admits that he stole the plaintiff's intellectual property rights without authorization and admits the legitimacy of the other party, which is completely confession and repentance. 4. Actively responding to the lawsuit has become the last choice of unwilling sellers in China.

However, if the seller completes the following three steps before actively responding to the lawsuit, it can even force GBC law firm to give up the complaint. The three steps are as follows: 1. Contact the court and another law firm. First, the seller should take the initiative to send a formal letter to the American court and the opposing law firm through a lawyer to clarify two pieces of information: ① Inform the opposing party of its own business name (which company is listed in the indictment) and accurate address, and ask the opposing party to serve judicial documents on the seller in a formal way, not in the form of an announcement; (2) Refusing to admit any illegal acts in the indictment before the final trial. These measures will buy sellers in China more than one year to respond to the lawsuit, increase the plaintiff's litigation cost and gain the initiative. Note: Law firms like GBC will not submit documents to sellers through formal channels. In fact, if they don't issue a subpoena according to the rules, they can apply for withdrawal immediately, which actually leaves themselves a way out. At the same time, both China and the United States are signatories to The Hague Convention on Service, and the US federal procedures and regulations should comply with The Hague Convention on Service when transmitting judicial documents to foreigners. The Hague Convention on Service stipulates that judicial documents from the United States to China must be handed over by the Ministry of Justice of China, and the documents served also need to be translated into the national language (that is, Chinese), and the seller has 90 days to reply after receiving the certificate. If it does not meet the service requirements, the defendant seller may also request to withdraw the lawsuit. 2. Contact PayPal. After that, the seller should send a lawyer's letter to Paypal as soon as possible, asking the other party to protect the security of the Paypal account in accordance with the laws of Singapore (Paypal, which signed the user agreement with the seller, is a Singapore company) and the terms of the contract signed by the seller in China, stating that if losses are caused by the arbitrary freezing or transfer of account funds, the seller will file a lawsuit against Paypal, thus putting pressure on it. As the complaints of GBC Law Office to sellers in China are generally cast a wide net, the above two steps can greatly reduce the pressure on sellers and increase the litigation cost of the other party. Even forced GBC law firm to drop the charges. 3. formally respond to the lawsuit. If the judicial documents are successfully received, and the account funds are relatively large and there is no infringement, the seller can formally file a lawsuit with the court through an American lawyer. Because lawyers' fees in the United States are charged by time, they are usually relatively high, so sellers should be psychologically prepared, and high fees are also an important reason why law firms like GBC dare to launch such lawsuits in large numbers.