How To Protect Your Brand On Amazon?

If you sell your products on Amazon, making sure that you have a brand that you can enforce is super important. Because if your product is any good, you will soon notice that there are a lot of people that are trying to sell products similar to yours, under a name similar to yours. 

That's precisely what trademarks are for. That's what gives you the ability to stop others from selling products and services that would confuse potential buyers into believing that they're buying your products from you. And instead, they're buying something else from somebody else.

Steps to Protect Your Brand on Amazon

There are two avenues that you can take to enforce your rights, enforce your brand on Amazon. But both rely on you having a proper trademark. The first avenue is very simple. You just fill out the form on their website. It's called a Trademark Infringement Form, where you claim that some other listing is for a product that's in the same niche as yours, the same category, and it has a name similar to yours. It doesn't have to be identical, but if it's similar enough to confuse, you should fill out that form and let Amazon know that you're not happy.

Another option is called Amazon Brand Registry and they've just launched a new version of that. This allows brand owners to proactively enforce their rights and stop their competition from putting in their products under similar names and thus competing with you.

This service allows brand owners to control who can and cannot sell their products on the Amazon marketplace. It also comes with a wide range of other helpful features that can be useful to anyone selling their products online. But when it comes to trademarks, the most useful feature is its trademark and brand protection services.

What you must have to use both these systems is a registered trademark for the name of the brand, not just the logo. And it has to be a registered trademark. You can't go to them and say, "Well, I've been in business. I've been selling this product for five years." They won't enforce it. It doesn't mean you can't do anything about it with your unregistered trademark, but you have to use the court system. 

If you want Amazon to help you, you have to have your brand trademarked properly. You have to have it registered, and it has to be a name, especially for the Amazon Brand Registry. All they care about is whether you have a ward mark for the brand name. That's how they can help you enforce your brand proactively against new sellers who might use a similar name. They'll just stop them.

Risks of Having an Unprotected Trademark on Amazon

What you don't want is bad reviews about a product that's not even yours, but that a lot of potential buyers are going to treat as a review about your product. So if you've got a good quality product on Amazon, you have to be very careful about making sure that look-a-likes, sound-a-likes, and just plain ripoffs don't result in a lot of bad reviews that people will attribute to your product. That's why you want to be able to use the tools that Amazon provides. 

And look, I've heard stories about Amazon not being extremely efficient about shutting down those infringing products. Yeah, I've heard that, but it's still better than the court system. It's still faster. Even if Amazon is not 100% perfect at taking down copycat products, it’s still probably your best option.

What you want to do is to make sure that you register your brand, as a trademark, and that you register it with Amazon Brand Registry. And that, as soon as you see that, for example, your sales drop right away. That might be a sign that there's a competitor who's selling your products or something very similar to your products, under a similar name, probably for a cheaper price, probably at inferior quality. Make sure you watch that and if you catch them, fill out the form. Fill out the Trademark Infringement Form, or notify Amazon otherwise that your brand, which is a proper trademark, has been infringed.

Get Trademarks Fast

If you have a product on Amazon, and you don't have the name trademarked, well, I think that should be one of the first things you do after you watch this video. You have to get your brand trademarked, plain and simple. The cost of getting a trademark is minimal, is nominal, compared to what you're going to lose if you have got competitors selling a similar product under a name that's similar to yours, plain and simple. Waiting too long to file your trademark can cost you your business. So don’t hesitate, especially if your product, and your brand, already exist in the highly visible Amazon marketplace. And the easiest way to file your trademark quickly and successfully is by using our services here at Trademark Factory.