court allows Lanham Act claims about allegedly deceptive Amazon product page grouping to proceed

Corsair Gaming, Inc. v. Choice Electronics Inc., 2025 WL 2822691, No. 5:25-cv-00045-BLF (N.D. Cal. Oct. 3, 2025)

There seem to be a couple of these cases out there. Corsair sells computer and gaming products under the “CORSAIR” brand; subsidiary Corsair Memory is the trademark registrant for “CORSAIR” for its products. US products are protected by a limited warranty, which by its terms is restricted to Corsair products purchased either directly through Corsair or an authorized t reseller. Both Corsair and Choice sell the products on Amazon through their respective Amazon storefronts.

Amazon allegedly permits vendors and third-party sellers to create “variation” relationships between substantially similar products that differ only in specific, narrow ways. A product detail page will display each product in the variation relationship as an alternative. “Owing to the close similarity of products within a variation relationship, the product detail page displays the total number of ratings and the average star rating for all products in a given variation relationship. For example, a product detail page for a shirt may offer for sale the same shirt design in various colors and sizes, displaying the total number of ratings and average star rating for the shirt across the range of colors and sizes offered.” To avoid consumer confusion, Amazon allegedly prohibits vendors from grouping together fundamentally different products within the same variation relationship.

Corsair initially sued Choice for violations of the Lanham Act and the California UCL, alleging that, though Choice isn’t an authorized reseller, it represented “that the Corsair products it offers for sale on Amazon are ‘new’ despite the fact that they are used, closed out, liquidated, counterfeit, and/or non-genuine product of unknown origin.” This opinion dealt only with the counterclaims for trademark invalidity and false advertising.

Choice sufficiently alleged that Corsair Memory abandoned the CORSAIR Mark because its “naked licensing and/or uncontrolled acquiescence of Corsair Gaming’s use of the CORSAIR trademarks has caused the marks to lose trademark significance, and as a consequence, the public no longer associates these marks with a single source of goods or services.” Corsair argued that this claim failed because Corsair and Corsair Memory are related entities. “While it is of course true that use by a trademark registrant’s related company inures to the benefit of the trademark registrant (and thus does not result in abandonment), the term ‘related company’ is specifically defined as ‘any person whose use of a mark is controlled by the owner of the mark with respect to the nature and quality of the goods or services on or in connection with which the mark is used.’” Thus, the corporate relationship alone was insufficient on its own to preclude abandonment; discovery would bear out the facts.

Lanham Act false advertising counterclaims: Choice alleged that Corsair “knowingly manipulates Amazon listings in order to show inflated and unwarranted reviews for its products by misleadingly listing new products as ‘variations’ of pre-existing products, instead of creating new listings for new products,” causing consumers to be “deceived and confused into believing that Corsair Products have amassed significant amounts of positive reviews and high ratings, when, in fact, such reviews and ratings merely relate to a prior product.”

This was plausible on a motion to dismiss. Choice alleged standing through direct competition in the sale of Corsair products. It further alleged that customers wrongly believe the accumulated reviews for the older products belong to, or otherwise endorse, a substantially different product. That sufficed to allege harm. Corsair argued that there was no redressability because Amazon controls the product pages, but the counterclaims specifically alleged that vendors like Corsair Gaming exert control over the variation relationships. And, even assuming that Rule 9(b) applied, the counterclaim sufficiently specified “how Corsair has allegedly created a variation relationship between three different computer monitors despite substantial technological differences.”

UCL unfair competition/NY GBL deceptive business practices: Sufficiently pled with respect to the same conduct covered by the Lanham Act, but not for Corsair’s allegedly unlawful warranty restrictions because Choice didn’t explain how the warranty harmed it. The allegations that “the purportedly unenforceable Corsair Warranty misleads consumers by creating the false impression that Corsair Products purchased through Choice’s Amazon storefront are not subject to the same protections and thus has ‘discouraged and dissuaded consumers from purchasing genuine Corsair Products from Choice Electronics’” were conclusory and wholly speculative.

Likewise, while Choice could refer to state and federal law for its UCL claims, it couldn’t use a violation of section 369-b of the New York GBL as the predicate violation for an “unlawful” UCL claim, because New York wanted only the NY AG to be able to enforce that law. That provision makes unlawful certain warranty restrictions such as those allegedly at issue here.