Amazon.com Inc. has launched a series of lawsuits against marketers, including a Toronto firm advertising a penis enlargement product, that the on-line retailer alleges are falsely using its name.

A numbered company, 1505820 Ontario Inc., sometimes carrying on business as Natural Grains Deli and Catering, is being sued by Amazon.com for $2.25-million in damages. The Seattle company alleges in a statement of claim filed this week in the Ontario Superior Court that the defendants caused "consumer confusion, mistake and deception in Canada," and seeks a permanent injunction to stop the numbered firm's alleged trademark infringement.

The Globe and Mail was unable to contact the numbered company or its legal counsel.

The Ontario lawsuit is one of 11 actions filed in the United States and Canada this week by Amazon.com, part of a continuing initiative to stop "spoofing," an on-line marketing ploy that conceals the true identity of an e-mail sender and instead falsely identifies someone else as the source.

Male vanity is a common theme in four of the 11 lawsuits against marketing firms allegedly using Amazon.com's name to sell penis enlargement products. The remaining seven on-line retailers' wares include such items as home appliances, pay-per-view movies and growth hormones.

"These people are injuring us by using our name. So there are very clear and well-established legal remedies for trademark infringement as well as consumer fraud that make it, in some ways, easier for us to bring legal action, if we can find the wrongdoers," said David Zapolsky, Amazon.com vice-president and associate general counsel, adding that similar e-mail problems have become "pretty rampant" in recent months.

In the Ontario action, Amazon.com alleges that the Toronto numbered company sent "large volumes" of e-mail messages advertising Gain Pro, penis enlargement pills guaranteed "to take your sex life to new levels."

The e-mails were designed so that they appeared to be sent from Amazon.com directly with the on-line retailer's name appearing in the "from" address.

The adopted trademark is a means to evade "anti-spam" filters designed to permit the receipt of e-mail from legitimate sources, the lawsuit claims.

But many of the e-mails were undeliverable and were subsequently returned to the alleged sender. As a result, Amazon.com's computer network in the United States was "burdened by the innumerable bounce messages resulting from the e-mail campaign," the suit said.