Guide to Amazon Brand Registry and Trademark Protection

Every business owner – big or small, startup or corporate, will readily agree on the importance of a business’s branding. Trademarks refer to a product or service name, a company logo, or a tagline (slogan) primarily used to identify and distinguish one’s products and services from those of other businesses.

Benefits of Trademark Protection

Your business reputation is critical to your success, and you need to maintain it through airtight marketing, branding, and trademarks. Needless to say, protecting one’s trademarks directly amounts to protecting one’s business.

With a trademark, you receive legal benefits like:

• Enforcement of trademark rights
• Sending of demand letters against third parties to cease and desist the use of the same or similar trademarks
• Prosecution of infringers
• Ability to resort to the courts to demand damages for the unauthorized use of your trademark

Amazon also offers:

• Transparency Program: a serialization program to prevent counterfeits
• Project Zero: a feature that enables brands to directly remove counterfeit listings themselves

To get full protection, proprietors need to register their trademarks with the Trademarks Office in the jurisdiction or country they would like to obtain protection. You must continuously use your trademark for your products and services to maintain your trademark rights.

It is important to bear in mind that simply incorporating or registering a corporate name does not create any trademark rights, nor does it constitute any type of government approval for a proprietor to use the name as a trademark. Also, merely registering one’s trademark as a domain name does not by itself create trademark rights.

If trademark owners or registrants stop using, abandon, or neglect a trademark, a court may find that they have abandoned their rights. Other companies will be free to adopt and use that abandoned trademark as their own. 

In the US, registrants even need to comply with mandatory post-registration submissions in specified time periods to prove that their trademarks had remained in use on the products and services listed in their registrations.

Enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry

Recently, a lot of businesses also sell their products through Amazon, which has a Brand Registry. The Amazon Brand Registry allows Amazon sellers (with registered trademarks) two distinct benefits while working under the company’s online umbrella: brand protection and brand support.

Brand protection gives a business owner the power to legally identify counterfeit or deceptive sellers that are infringing on their registered trademarks. 

Brand support means that inquiries and filings are completed with minimal effort on the brand owner’s end when doing business in Amazon’s online marketplace.

To be eligible for these benefits, Amazon sellers need to have a registered trademark (either a standard character mark or a logo with words) in each country where they wish to enroll for Brand Registry. Amazon Brand Registry also accepts brands that have pending trademark applications in specific trademark offices.

Filing an application is not the same as registering. Filing is just the first step. After registering your trademark, you’ll receive a registration number that will enable you to successfully apply to the Brand Registry. Amazon improved its Brand Registry by allowing early entry to its registry based on a pending trademark application.

Thankfully, Amazon sellers no longer have to rely on the inefficient and costly Amazon IP accelerator system. While IP accelerator services grant rapid access to Amazon Brand registry, they only cover products already sold on Amazon. In other words, your listing must be active at the time you submit your application. Once you fully register your trademark, you can add new listings to the Brand Registry.

Six months later, Amazon will check the status of the trademark application. Amazon may remove you from its Brand Registry if you don’t register your trademark by then.

When to Trademark

Ideally, you would want to obtain trademark protection for your brand as soon as you realize that your brand is valuable and that you do not want to risk another business stealing your branding. 

Unfortunately, another party can steal your business or brand name by filing a trademark application first. Even worse, that third party might send you a cease and desist letter demanding you stop using your own name.

It is much more difficult to enforce one’s trademark rights if it remains unregistered. 

This may especially prove to be a nightmare in Amazon. Amazon will not concern itself as to which party a trademark rightfully belongs to. The Amazon Brand Registry simply relies on the trademark registration submitted to them.

Registering a trademark is a time-consuming and complicated process, so don’t go at it alone. It’s often a good idea to hire a trademark professional to handle your trademark registration needs. 

You can put a price on almost anything you sell on Amazon—except brand protection. 

Frequently Asked Questions