Brands selling on both eBay and Amazon deal with two completely different enforcement systems. eBay's VeRO program and Amazon's Brand Registry both get infringing listings removed, but they differ in speed, evidence demands, and what happens when sellers fight back. Here is how they compare and how to work both at once.
The reporting portal handles most counterfeit enforcement. But some situations outgrow it: the infringer fights back, the damages justify the spend, or the marketplace stops responding. Knowing which side of that line you are on saves both the money wasted on lawyers for portal-level problems and the months wasted on portals for lawyer-level problems.
Anonymous sellers on foreign marketplaces, single listings with no sales history, and infringers you cannot identify are portal problems, not lawyer problems. A demand letter to an untraceable seller is money spent on postage. Similarly, if the listing comes down with a standard filing, the portal worked; do not upgrade a solved problem into a legal matter because it felt serious.
Lawyers bill by the hour, so arrive organized: your trademark registrations, the full filing history with dates and outcomes, the infringer's identity evidence, screenshots with timestamps, and your estimate of damages. The question to ask is not "can we sue" but "what does winning look like and what does it cost." Sometimes the answer is a cease-and-desist that settles in a week. Sometimes it is litigation you should decline. A good IP lawyer will tell you which one it is in the first hour if you bring the file.
Most mature enforcement programs run both tracks: the portal handles volume, counsel handles the exceptions. The skill is the triage. Review the enforcement queue monthly and ask of each stubborn case: is this stuck because the portal is slow, or because the situation needs legal weight? The first gets persistence. The second gets a lawyer. Programs that never escalate leave money on the table; programs that escalate everything burn it.
IP lawyers generally bill in three ways: hourly, flat fee per matter, and contingency or hybrid arrangements for cases with clear damages. Hourly is standard for advisory work and early-stage matters where the scope is uncertain. Flat fees appear for well-defined tasks like sending a cease-and-desist or handling a single counter-notice response. Contingency shows up when the damages are large and provable enough for the lawyer to share the risk.
The fee structure tells you something about the matter itself. If a lawyer will only work hourly, the outcome is uncertain or the damages are speculative. If they offer a flat fee, the task is routine enough to price. Neither is good or bad; the signal is whether the structure matches your situation. Be wary of anyone who pushes litigation before the demand-letter stage has been tried, and of anyone who cannot explain in plain language what each phase costs and what it is supposed to achieve. The first call should leave you with a map, not just a retainer agreement.
Before hiring counsel or launching an escalation campaign, ask one question: what does the infringer lose if we succeed? If the answer is a single listing with no sales, the portal is enough. If the answer is a revenue stream, a distribution channel, or a business, then legal weight is justified. Enforcement spending should track the infringer's exposure, not your frustration. The angriest cases are not always the most valuable ones, and the discipline of matching the response to the stakes is what keeps an enforcement budget from becoming a sunk-cost spiral.