In case you needed another reason to consider trademarking your brand, Amazon’s Brand Registry offers many benefits to trademark owners and applicants selling on the Amazon marketplace.
Sales of counterfeit goods have long been problematic in online marketplaces, including Amazon. Counterfeiting is a deterrent both for businesses and customers to do business through online marketplaces. To help combat this issue, Amazon launched the Brand Registry to help brand owners identify counterfeiters and stop any counterfeit activity related to their brand. Today, the Brand Registry offers much more than anti-counterfeit measures and services, but enrolment in the Brand Registry is limited to those with applied-for or registered trademarks in an eligible jurisdiction.
Eligibility for Enrolling in the Brand Registry
To enroll in the Brand Registry, brand owners must have a pending or registered word mark or design mark in an eligible jurisdiction. The pending or registered mark must match the brand name on the Brand Registry application and the trademark must appear on the relevant product(s) and/or the product’s packaging.
Jurisdictions that Amazon currently considers to be eligible jurisdictions are: the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Singapore, Spain, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Sweden, Poland, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates.
Requirements to apply for or register a trademark vary in each jurisdiction, as does the processing time for an application to proceed to registration. Before deciding to apply for a trademark, you should become familiar with the requirements of the jurisdiction in which you plan to file.
Benefits of Enrolling in the Brand Registry
There are many benefits for brand owners registered in the Brand Registry. Examples include:
- Anti-counterfeit measures and measures to ensure product authenticity: machine learning proactively blocks suspected bad product listings before they are published. Members are also provided with a self-service tool to remove counterfeit listings.
- Advertising advantages: rich content features and product videos are some of the advertising advantages available to brand owners registered in the Brand Registry
- Access to Amazon Vine (in certain jurisdictions): a program that invites Amazon’s most trusted reviewers to post reviews on products sold by participating selling partners
- Access to Amazon Brand Analytics: a feature that provides data on customer purchase behaviour, competitive analysis, and search optimization to allow brand owners to make informed and strategic decisions about their products and advertising activities
Success of the Brand Registry
As of April 2022, over 500,000 brands were enrolled in the Brand Registry. Amazon reports that over 6 million counterfeit accounts have been stopped before publishing any items for sale, and that, on average, brands enrolled in the Brand Registry reported a 99% reduction in suspected trademark infringements since the Brand Registry was launched.
If you are selling on Amazon and have applied for or own a trademark, you should consider enrolling in the Brand Registry. If you are presently selling on Amazon or are considering selling on Amazon and have not applied-for or registered a trademark, you should consider applying for a trademark in a relevant jurisdiction to become eligible for the Brand Registry.
If you would like to learn more about the benefits of trademarking your brand, your logo, and/or your product names, do not hesitate to contact one of our experts at BRION RAFFOUL LLP!
