While building and protecting over 350,000 brands, Amazon is working hard to become the world’s most customer-centric company. By enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry (ABR) unlocks a suite of tools designed to help you build and protect your brand, creating a better experience for customers.

What is the Amazon brand registry?

Amazon Brand Registry gives you access to tools that enable you to more accurately represent your brand, find and report violations, and share information that can help us proactively prevent infringement. Brand Registry also helps you protect your intellectual property and create an accurate and trusted experience for customers on Amazon.

Hence, your brand is built and protected by ABR in the following ways:

Brand building

• A+ Content: A+ Content helps businesses showcase their brand story and product features using rich text and images on the Amazon detail page to help drive conversion, and potentially increase traffic and sales.
• Sponsored Brands: Grow your brand awareness with Amazon Sponsored Brands ads that feature your logo, a custom headline, and up to three of your products.
• Amazon Stores: Promote your brand and products with your own multi-page Store on Amazon for free.
• Amazon Brand Analytics: Make informed and strategic decisions with powerful data. Learn more about customers, including search terms and more customer behavior data reports, which can help you to make smarter, faster business decisions.

Brand protection

• Accurate listings: Better manage your brand’s product listings so that customers see accurate information.
• Proactive brand protection: Our automated protections use information about your brand to proactively remove suspected infringing or inaccurate content. The more information you provide, the better Brand Registry can help you protect and improve your brand experience.
• Report violations: Our powerful search tools let you find and report suspected violations with a simple, guided process.

What is needed for Amazon Brand Registry?

Before you get started registering your brand with Amazon, first review the eligibility requirement, then sign into Amazon Brand Registry, and finally enroll your brand.

The main requirements include:

• An active registered trademark for your brand that appears on your products or packaging

Also, for US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) marks, the Mark Drawing Type must be equal to “4 – STANDARD CHARACTER MARK” or “1 – TYPESET WORD(S)/LETTER(S)/NUMBER(S)”.

Currently, Amazon only accepts trademarks that have been issued by government trademark offices in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Singapore, Spain, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates.

• The ability to verify yourself as the rights owner or the authorized agent for the trademark
• An Amazon account. You can use an existing Amazon account (credentials associated with Vendor or Seller Central) or create a new one for free.

Other important requirements are:

• Your “Government Registered Principal Trademark Registration” or Serial Number.
• Images of the brand’s logo.
• Images of products and packaging that carry the trademarked brand name. If the product is not branded, the packaging must be branded.
• A list of product categories (e.g., apparel, sporting goods, electronics) in which the brand should be listed.
• A list of countries where the brand’s products are manufactured and distributed.

Once you have all the information in the list above, go to Amazon’s brand registry page and complete your registration.

How do I register my own brand on Amazon?

The first thing you need to have is a Seller Central Account. If you don’t already have one, you can register for one at sellercentral.amazon. Next, you have to create an account through the  Amazon Brand Registry. There, Amazon will ask for a form social media account and your registered Trademark Number. This number is issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) – pending trademarks are given serial numbers, and registered trademarks are issued registration numbers.

Once the Brand Registry application is submitted, Amazon will then send an email containing a case number code to the address connected to the Trademark account. When you receive this case number code, go to your Seller Central application and paste it into the required field. Please note that this Trademark needs to be a live trademark and not pending, in order to work. When all the information is provided, you are then required to pay a fee of $248 to complete the application.

Here are the following steps you must take to register your brand on ABR:

1. Log into your Amazon Seller Central Account
2. Create an account through Amazon Brand Registry
3. Amazon asks for Trademark Number
4. Amazon sends an email to register to the Trademark account
5. Then you should receive your case number code (in the email)
6. Copy and paste code into Seller Central (Trademark needs to be live)
7. Pay fee.

Do you need a trademark for Amazon Brand Registry?

Yes, you need a trademark for Amazon brand registry. As earlier stated, a trademark is an integral requirement for registration on ABR. While Amazon doesn’t charge you to register your brand, they do require a trademark; the cost for trademark registration will create a barrier to entry for some sellers.

However, when submitting your brand registry application to Amazon, the trademark information you supply has to be an exact match to what is registered on the U.S. Patent and Trade Office database, including capitalization and spaces. Any differences will cause a rejection of your brand registry application and further delay your access to the protection that brand registration with Amazon gives you.

While registration of a trademark costs money, the cost varies depending on how you go about it. Trademark application fees can cost anywhere from $225 to $400, plus additional fees for any additional classes you would like to protect. If you use a trademark attorney or get serviced by Trademark Engine, a higher should be expected.

If you have multiple brands, the trademarking process can get really expensive, really fast. Depending on your circumstances, registering a single “all-encompassing” brand may be a better option than registering multiple independent brands.

Also, the location of product sales (either right now or intended) is a consideration when registering your trademark. If you are in the U.S. only, then the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will do. However, if you currently sell or intend to sell in Europe or internationally, then registering with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), which uses the “Madrid System,” may be more suitable.

Conclusion

While the benefits of Amazon Brand Registry to your business cannot be over-emphasized, it’s important to get legal advice on what is right for you and your business. Also, enforcing trademarks internationally is a much more complicated issue and not within the scope of this post.