Planet Green Appeal Seeks to Halt Amazon's Decimation of Recycled Ink Cartridges

Amazon is responsible for the decimation of legitimate companies like Planet Green that supply genuinely remanufactured and recycled printer ink cartridges, said Planet Green’s opening brief Friday (docket 23-4434) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It's seeking to reverse the district court’s dismissal of its fraud complaint against Amazon on grounds that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields Amazon from liability (see 2312290030). Amazon is the dominant source of foreign-made “clone” printer ink cartridges -- newly manufactured products that are misrepresented to consumers as remanufactured and recycled, when they aren’t, said Planet Green. Amazon imports the falsely labeled clone cartridges from overseas, stores them in its warehouses and distributes them to consumers throughout the U.S., said the brief. It takes "title" to them and “itself sells them directly to consumers in packaging and bearing labels that falsely identifies the clone cartridges as remanufactured or recycled,” it said. Amazon also promotes them through its own statements over the Amazon website, via email and on third-party internet platforms, it said. It also “participates extensively” in the promotion and sale of the clone cartridges by third-party sellers on its website, and “profits handsomely from those sales,” it said. On Section 230, the district court wrongly found that Amazon was entitled to “complete immunity” from Planet Green’s action, “even though its claims arise in significant part from statements, sales, and conduct by Amazon itself that do not constitute the publication of third-party statements over Amazon’s website,” it said. The court also held that Amazon couldn’t be held liable for false and misleading product listings, it said. The district court ultimately gave Amazon a “get-out-of-jail-free card” that would allow it to disregard “any legal obligation to avoid deceiving consumers about printer ink cartridges,” it said. That result “twists” Section 230, which is a statute “focused on limiting liability for the publication of third party statements on the internet, beyond recognition,” it said: “It must be reversed.”