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DEMAND FOR ARBITRATION - 1

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K&L GATES LLP 925 FOURTH AVENUE SUITE 2900 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98104-1158 TELEPHONE: (206) 623-7580 FACSIMILE:

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AMERICAN ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION

AMAZON.COM, INC., a Delaware corporation, Claimant, v. THOMAS GLENN, aka THOMAS CASTILLO, aka THOMAS GLENN CASTILLO, an individual, Respondent. No. ____________________

AMAZON.COM, INC.’S DEMAND FOR ARBITRATION

Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”), for its demand for arbitration, states as follows:

I. SUMMARY

1.

Each day, millions of consumers use Amazon’s websites to assist with their purchasing decisions. In order to make those decisions more informed, Amazon provides Amazon Best Sellers, best-seller lists of all the products in the Amazon marketplace, including general merchandise, physical books and the e-books sold in the Kindle Store. The Kindle Store is home to hundreds of thousands of authors and millions of e-books. 2.

One segment of books available in the Kindle Store are books self- published on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service and sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC and other Amazon affiliates on various Amazon websites. Authors and publishers who use this service to deliver their books to their readers agree to the KDP terms and conditions.


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3.

A very small minority of KDP authors or publishers attempt to gain an unfair competitive advantage by manipulating Amazon Best Sellers to reflect false sales for their self-published books sold on Amazon. Some of these KDP authors rely on online “marketing” services to obtain false sales to cause e-books to rise the ranks of Amazon Best Sellers. While small in number, the individuals offering to manipulate Amazon Best Sellers threaten to undermine the trust that customers and the vast majority of KDP authors place in Amazon, thereby tarnishing Amazon’s brand and the Kindle brand. Amazon strictly prohibits any attempt to manipulate sales in the Amazon marketplace and actively polices third-party websites offering services that contravene Amazon policies. Despite substantial efforts to stamp out the practice, a small number of bad actors continue to offer services to improperly manipulate Amazon Best Sellers. 4.

Over the last year, Amazon has worked with cooperating KDP authors to identify websites offering best-seller list manipulation and the individuals responsible for the websites. Through these efforts, Amazon has identified numerous websites and the Amazon users associated with these marketing schemes and demanded that they cease use of the Amazon services and taken enforcement action against Amazon users embroiled in these schemes by suspending or blocking their accounts. This demand for arbitration is a continuation of that strategy and is intended to eliminate the incentives for KDP authors to engage in these deceptive marketing practices. 5.

Respondent Thomas Glenn (also known as Thomas Castillo and Thomas Glenn Castillo) (“Respondent”) is a marketer of services to KDP authors that are designed to improperly inflate Kindle sales, offered through the website freebookservice.com (“Freebookservice”). Respondent’s marketing service attempts to manipulate Amazon’s services to the detriment of customers. Freebookservice seeks to artificially inflate the sales ranks of books, making them seem more popular and thereby confusing customers.


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Respondent profits from this service by charging authors, both unscrupulous and those taken in by the false hope his service is legitimate, a range of fees tied to the impact of his nefarious work. 6.

Through the actions of Respondent, numerous Amazon user accounts have been created by which to manifest the service he offers. Respondent has engaged in an extensive and concerted effort to tortiously induce KDP authors and publishers to breach the KDP Terms and Conditions, to mislead Amazon’s customers, and to manipulate Amazon Best Sellers. Respondent has knowingly violated Amazon’s Conditions of Use, and has used deception and artifice in an attempt to circumvent Amazon’s investigative and enforcement efforts. Respondent has induced KDP authors and publishers to artificially inflate the ranking of books by offering the books for limited-time free promotions and then repeatedly downloading the books from systematically generated Amazon customer accounts. 7.

Amazon brings this arbitration demand to terminate Respondent’s activity on the KDP service and to force disgorgement of Respondent’s ill-gotten gains. 8.

In this proceeding, Amazon brings claims for violations of §43 of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §1125(a) (Unfair Competition/False Advertising); violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act (RCW Ch. 19.86); breach of contract; and violation of Washington common law.

II. THE PARTIES

9.

Amazon is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Seattle, Washington. Amazon owns and operates the Amazon.com website, and equivalent international websites. Amazon has more than 250 million active customers.