If you are selling your products on Amazon, trademark registration should definitely be a priority. Why? Because the Amazon Brand Registry offers many benefits when selling on the platform, and to enroll, a registered trademark is necessary.
iGERENT can help you register a trademark that complies with the Amazon Brand Registry requirements. Our experts will advise you on how to avoid common mistakes when enrolling.
To request our team’s help in enrolling your trademark with the Amazon Brand Registry, fill in your email below
The self-stated aim of the Amazon Brand registry is to help brand owners report and fight trademark infringement and protect their intellectual property.
Trademark owners selling on Amazon who register with the program will benefit from many exclusive features.
The first of those is full control of the product listings and enhanced brand content for their products. What does this mean?
Very often, an item is sold on Amazon by several sellers with only one listing. This listing contains the product information, title, brand placement, pictures and reviews. It can be submitted by any of the vendors and Amazon chooses the one to display.
However, if the owner of the trademark for a specific product is registered with the Brand Registry program, they can choose the content of the product listing.
Another benefit is what Amazon calls Proactive Brand Protection. If a trademark is enrolled with the program, Amazon will automatically remove some infringing products and suspicious content.
Finally, Amazon’s Brand Registry provides tools for brand owners to detect and report trademark infringement. Those tools include some search modules that allow trademark owners to search both text and images for counterfeit products. Brand Registry owners are also offered special procedures to report violations.
In order to file a brand registry application, a seller must check that they comply with the requirements laid out by Amazon.
First of all, applicants must ensure that they are actually entitled to use the trademark they wish to register for. This means that they must be the owners of the registered trademark.
They can also be authorized distributors or resellers. In this case, they will need the trademark owner’s written permission to register. Amazon provides a specific form for the owner to fill out.
In some countries, applicants must also make sure that the trademark is effectively registered. For trademarks in those countries, trademark applications are not sufficient to enroll.
Amazon currently accepts trademarks registered before the patent and trademark office of those countries: United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Singapore, Spain, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates.
In order for the application to be accepted, the trademark must appear on the products or their packaging. In addition, the registered trademark must be exactly identical to the brand name on the product (spaces, punctuation, uppercase / lowercase letters…)
Finally, the applicant needs to list the product categories that the brand belongs to. This can be clothing, sports equipment, etc. Note that some products are not eligible to be enrolled through Amazon’s registry: books, music, videos, DVDs, entertainment or sports collectibles.
The Amazon Brand Registry accepts both word marks (standard character marks) and figurative marks (logos).
However, it must be remembered that the trademark must be exactly identical to the brand used on Amazon. Even slight variations of the logo can lead to rejection of the application. Therefore, a wordmark might be a better option.
The requirements for what trademarks are accepted depend on the country in which the registration is done.
In many countries, such as Canada, Mexico, Brazil and others, the trademark must be registered in order to be accepted.
In a few other countries, however, other statuses are acceptable.
For instance, for the United States, the trademark status in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) must be either “live registration” or “live application”. That means the trademark can still be in process, but it cannot have been permanently refused or cancelled.
In the United Kingdom or the European Union, applications in process can also be used to enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry.
It is important to note that during the Brand Registry enrollment process, Amazon will send a verification code to the owner of the trademark via email. To do so, they find publicly available contact information for the trademark owner as registered with the official trademark office.
Therefore, it is important to have an email address publicly available for the trademark owner. This can be done in different ways. The easiest one is to have a representative or agent (such as iGERENT) for the registered trademark. Another way is to have a website for the trademark name where a contact email is easily found.
Amazon also updates their requirements periodically. It is highly recommended to check the current Amazon Brand Registry Requirements directly with them in order to be sure that a trademark is acceptable.
If you are selling on Amazon and do not have a registered trademark yet, it is time to start the process.
iGERENT offers worldwide trademark registration services and can help you register in any of the countries accepted for Amazon trademarks.
Currently, you can use a trademark registered in any of the countries listed above to sell on any of the Amazon stores. Therefore, you can choose to register the trademark before one of the fastest of the accepted Trademarks Offices, such as the United Kingdom IP office or the Benelux Intellectual Property Office.
However, we also recommend that you register the trademark in the country in which you are effectively selling your product. This will help also protect your trademark outside of the scope of Amazon. A registered trademark can protect your trademark from infringement on other platforms or in more traditional retail stores.
Contact our expert team directly in order to request a quote for the registration of your trademark. We offer free consultation and expert advice!