By Doni Robinson
doni@jayaramlaw.com
Successfully obtaining a federal trademark is a crucial and imperative step necessary to protect your brand. However, if you’re a trademark owner selling your goods on Amazon, you should take advantage of Amazon’s ancillary protection mechanism. Amazon Brand Registry affords private sellers with registered trademarks a variety of protections. These protections include preventing counterfeits from being sold on Amazon, and also gives the seller greater autonomy over how consumers view and interact with their products on Amazon.
How does it work?
You must have a registered federal trademark to be eligible. You also must specify what it is you’re selling, and provide proof of your brand’s logo, packing and other manufacturing and distribution details. Amazon’s process to submit this information is relatively easy and quick. Additionally, you have the ability to give your trademark lawyer, or other brand agents, access to the account.
What are the benefits?
Enrollment in the Amazon Brand Registry provides sellers with “powerful tools including proprietary text and image search, predictive automation based on your reports of suspected intellectual property rights violations, and increased authority over product listings with your brand name.” The Brand Registry allows sellers to take a more active role in combating counterfeiting and infringement, while also bringing these potential infringing activities to light sooner. This allows for quicker response time from Amazon in taking down products which violate a registered seller’s products. Once approved, sellers on the registry are also able to learn more about potential infringers’ products and their companies. This information is valuable not only to keep shady sellers off of Amazon, but provides the seller with key information necessary to combat trademark infringement actions to further prohibit these actions. Beyond protection from infringers, sellers have the potential to increase sales and consumers find their experience in purchasing products on the Brand Registry is improved.
Overall, if you have a registered trademark and are offering goods for sale on Amazon, joining the Brand Registry should definitely be a priority. Contact Jayaram Law for help in securing a federal trademark and then using that federal trademark to expand your brands’ protection by joining Amazon’s new and improved Brand Registry.