Register Your Brand With Amazon’s Brand Registry

Many people don’t realize that Amazon means it when they call themselves a global “marketplace.” Until recently, that pair of Levis jeans for sale on Amazon might have been made and sold by Levi Strauss & Co., or they might be made by a counterfeiter, or they might be sold by someone who bought them in bulk at a discount, or any number of sellers. Facing a rising tide of criticism over counterfeit and low quality items being sold on its site, Amazon launched its Amazon Brand Registry in 2017. Here is a simplification of the pricing and buying process before and after the implementation of Amazon’s Brand Registry:  

How can you take advantage of the Amazon Brand Registry if you sell products on Amazon?

(1) Secure registration of your trademark with a government trademark office in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the European Union, or the United Arab Emirates. This is by far the longest step in this process and can take more than a year from application to registration, if there are no errors in the application and the mark itself is registrable.

(2) Sign up for the Brand Registry and enroll your brand(s). You must provide:

• Your brand name that has an active registered trademark,
• The associated government-registered trademark number,
• A list of product categories (e.g., apparel, sporting goods, electronics) in which your brand should be listed,
• A list of countries where your brand’s products are manufactured and distributed.

(3) After Amazon verifies the information you submit during enrollment, you will be able to access Brand Registry’s features to help protect your brand. Amazon will verify your registration by contacting the person who registered your mark with the government office. In our case at Schott, P.C., we get an email asking us to verify that our client is seeking to register its mark, and also a digital key that we forward to our client. They must enter that key into the Brand Registry to complete the process.

There are a few things to note.

• The item(s) you sell on Amazon must bear the mark you registered. You can register a word or image mark, but it must be clearly marked on your product or its packaging.
• Registration in the Brand Registry allows expedited reporting of counterfeiting and Amazon will monitor sales to remove other sellers who try to sell your brand. Amazon’s does its monitoring not only manually, but also using automatic fraud detection. As Amazon states on its website, “Our automated protections use information about your brand to proactively remove suspected infringing or inaccurate content. The more information you provide, the better Brand Registry can help you protect and improve your brand experience.”

We have helped a lot of clients register marks and navigate the Amazon process, and Amazon spent 400 million USD in 2019 to prevent fraud and counterfeiting, so this is an investment worth making if you’re selling on Amazon. If you have any questions, please contact us.