AMAZON BRAND REGISTRY TRADEMARK TIPS
Amazon has proven itself to be the go-to marketplace to purchase and sell products online, but there are downsides to dealing with such a successful platform. Many business owners find themselves struggling to stop others from infringing their trademarks, providing counterfeit goods and even hijacking their listings. In an effort to combat these issues, Amazon created its Amazon Brand Registry to:
Provide access to 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.
In order to register on Amazon’s Brand Registry, however, it is required that you have a federally registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
WHAT IS A TRADEMARK?
A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination of any of those elements, which identifies the source of a product or service. Unique names, logos, slogans, sounds, packaging can all be granted a trademark registration by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) if they act as source identifiers. Keep in mind, that a trademark is not necessarily your business name, and registering your entity with the Secretary of State does not establish a trademark.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO ENROLL IN AMAZON BRAND REGISTRY?
Currently, Amazon requires your registered trademark to fall in one of the following USPTO Mark Drawing Types:
- 1 – Typeset Word(s)/Letter(s)/Numbers(s)
- 3 – An Illustration Drawing Which Includes Word(s), Letter(s)/Number(s)
- 4 – Standard Character Mark
- 5 – Words, Letters, or Numbers in a Stylized Form
In other words, your trademark cannot be merely a logo without any wording. If you only have a trademark registration on your logo, your actual brand name may not be protected and you may need to file a new application for it in order to utilized Amazon’s Brand Registry.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO REGISTER A TRADEMARK?
Once you submit a trademark application, it will usually take at least nine months to receive a registration assuming everything was done correctly and there are no other issues with your application. That timeline can easily be extended by a number of months and/or years depending on the examination of your application and whether or not there are any oppositions to your trademark.
Your application will get assigned to an Examining Attorney (the person who will review your application) about 3 months after your filing date. You can typically expect about another month from there until you hear something back. That initial examination plays a big part in determining how long this whole process might take.
If your application is approved by the Examining Attorney, it will continue on to a publication period which is when others who feel your mark would damage their own mark may oppose the application. If there is no opposition during that time, your application will continue along the best case scenario timeline and eventually issue as a registered trademark.
If, however, the Examining Attorney has reason to reject your application, you will receive what is called an Office Action which you will have 6 months to respond to. The reasons for receiving an Office Action vary, and it is highly recommended for a trademark attorney to review this with you and discuss what your options are. In any case, this can greatly alter the time it takes for you to receive a registered trademark or might mean that you won’t be able to register your mark at all.
AMAZON BRAND REGISTRY SIGN UP
Once you receive your trademark registration, you’ll be able to submit your information on Amazon’s Brand Registry. If you are a business on Amazon, it is highly recommended you consider filing a trademark application if you have not done so already.
