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Amazon Brand Registry: A Tool to Protect Sellers’ Intellectual Property

By Judy Lu


In recent years, Amazon has been working on protecting Amazon sellers’ brands and products. Besides mandatory requirements for sellers to follow Amazon Anti-Counterfeiting Policy and Amazon Intellectual Property Policy, in 2017, Amazon updated its Brand Registry program, which enhances the protection of sellers’ intellectual property and gives them more control over their brands.


The Amazon Brand Registry is a program that protects sellers’ trademarked brands, offers enrolled sellers powerful tools to present brands on Amazon more accurately, and prevents potential intellectual property infringement.


According to Amazon’s report, there are more than 130,000 brands registered in the Brand Registry worldwide and 99% fewer suspected infringements than before the Amazon Brand Registry launched.


Before the update, the Amazon Brand Registry focused more on giving sellers more control over their product information pages. The newest version provides sellers opportunities to report unfair competition and submit infringement claims.


Overall, the Amazon Brand Registry improves sellers’ experiences on Amazon and raises awareness of the importance of intellectual property protection.


Amazon Brand Registry’s benefits

Firstly, Amazon has more powerful search and report tools that could benefit sellers enrolled in the program. The Amazon Brand Registry ensures more accurate and recognizable representations of not only brand names and product information, but also images and logos. When customers use images to search products they want, sellers who participate in the Amazon Brand Registry program would have advantages to be identified more quickly and accurately.


In addition, sellers can detect suspected intellectual property infringements by searching Amazon Standard Identification Numbers (ASINs) or product URLs and report them by following a simple guideline.


Secondly, the Amazon Brand Registry uses information provided by sellers to offer additional proactive brand protections. The more detailed information provided, the better Amazon Brand Registry can protect sellers’ brands and their intellectual property.


For example, the Amazon Brand Registry can detect images that contain the product but do not have the product’s brand name on it, and product listings that misuse trademarked brand names.


The Amazon Brand Registry also provides brand-building benefits as marketing tools to helps sellers grow their businesses. Business owners can utilize the Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) function to display their product features by text placements, enhance images, videos and brand stories.


A more unique brand representation is more likely to attract customers and increase traffic. Enrolled sellers can build stores for free. Stores is a self-service and branded destination similar to official websites that can inspire, educate and deliver more product information to visitors.


How it works

To be eligible for enrolling Amazon Brand Registry, the first criterion is having a brand name that is registered and active with the USPTO and other national offices.


It is worth mentioning that, in October 2019, Amazon announced the launch of Amazon IP Accelerator, a new program that helps businesses to have their brand names trademarked more easily and quickly. Sellers who enroll in Amazon IP Accelerator could apply for the Amazon Brand Registry when the trademark application is still pending. During the application process, applicants need to provide the brand name, the associated government-registered trademark number, a list of product categories and a list of countries where products are manufactured and delivered.

One limitation is that Amazon currently only accepts trademarks issued in U.S., Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Singapore, Spain, U.K. and the United Arab Emirates.


Besides the Amazon Brand Registry, Transparency, a service that proactively prevents counterfeits from customers, is another program that Amazon launched to strengthen the protection of Amazon sellers’ intellectual property. Sellers are encouraged to enroll in these programs and enjoy the additional intellectual property protection offered by Amazon.



References

1.      Why Amazon Brand Registry? https://brandservices.amazon.com/

2.      Amazon Brand Registry – Progress Report https://brandservices.amazon.com/progressreport

3.      Amazon Advertising -- Stores https://advertising.amazon.com/products/stores/?ref_=a20m_us_hnav_st&tag=googhydr-20&ld=NSGoogle_googhydr-20

4.      Amazon Brand Registry – Eligibility Requirement https://brandservices.amazon.com/eligibility

5.      Mehta, D. (2019). Amazon Intellectual Property Accelerator https://blog.aboutamazon.com/policy/amazon-intellectual-property-accelerator?tag=googhydr-20&ld=NSGoogle_googhydr-20

6.      Amazon IP Accelerator https://brandservices.amazon.com/ipaccelerator

7.      Transparency https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency