Protect Your Trademark with the Amazon Brand Registry

For businesses who sell products online, an Amazon store can present a lucrative enterprise. In 2018, Amazon captured 49% of all online sales. Whether you run your own ecommerce store through your website, or just choose to sell via third party sites, even smaller retailers choose to sell on Amazon for the huge reach to the customer base it provides.

Of course, a consideration of selling your products via a third party site is the risk that unauthorized sellers may attempt to use your trademark, or produce counterfeit products with highly similar presentations. This is a common practice on other third party seller sites, such as wish.com and alibaba.com. Unfortunately on most of these sites, there is little to no enforceable protection for the trademark owner or original producer of said infringed product.

Amazon offers to change all that, helping to mitigate the risk for their shop owners by offering a brand registry for those sellers who own a federal trademark registration for their brand. Shop owners merely complete the online form with information about their registration and Amazon will do the rest – for free – to ensure that no third party sells products under your mark without your authorization.

In order to take advantage of this offer from Amazon, businesses need to start with a federal registration for trademark for any products they wish to safeguard. The more distinct and clear your mark, the more enforceable the registration will be, not just by Amazon’s system, but against any competing uses of your trademark. For more information about creating a clear, distinct and enforceable trademark, contact our office. With more than 20 years of experience in trademark registration, protection and enforcement, we can ensure your brand is YOUR brand alone.