Seattle Trademark Lawyer

Amazon gives trademark owners a new reason to register their brands: it’s a ticket to enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry program.

Enrollment gives trademark owners access to enforcement tools within the Amazon marketplace, including what Amazon describes as “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.”

This is becoming increasingly popular with clients.

To qualify, brand owners first need to register their marks with a government trademark office in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Only standard character marks (word marks) qualify — design marks (logos) are not included. The subject trademark also “must match the brand name printed on products and/or packaging.”

Enrollees in Amazon’s previous program must re-enroll to get the benefits of the new program. However, any brand owner (enrolled or not) can still lodge an intellectual property infringement complaint with Amazon through its public interface (though that tool has mixed reviews at best).

It remains to be seen whether Amazon’s new program will live up to its promise. However, I’m all in favor of the stated goal: to help trademark owners and Amazon “work together to reduce potential intellectual property rights violations and promote an accurate representation of [trademark owners’ brands] on Amazon.”