- What is the Amazon Brand Registry?
- How do I sign up for Amazon Brand Registry?
- How do I register a brand in the Amazon Brand Registry?
- What are the costs associated with the registration?
- Amazon Transparency Program
- Amazon Project Zero
- Conclusion
Registration in the Amazon Brand Registry provides features to protect your brand from counterfeiting and misuse. You can search all Amazon marketplaces for images, terms, ASINs, and trademarks to detect potential copyright and trademark infringement and report violations to the Amazon team.
It also opens up additional marketing opportunities, such as the use of Amazon-Vine, A+ Content, Sponsored Brands, and Brand Stores. In addition, brand owners get access to interesting analytics tools such as Amazon Brand Analytics.
What is the Amazon Brand Registry?
Amazon Brand Registry is a program to protect your brand and fight counterfeit. It also unlocks brand building and marketing benefits, such as the creation of A+ Content or a Brand Store.
Since 2017, the New Brand Registry, or Brand Registry 2.0 has been available. The new program is open to all brands regardless of the marketplace. Brand owners can register for the program on Amazon.
How do I sign up for Amazon Brand Registry?
You will need the following data for registration:
- the identifier of the trademark application in the respective trademark register
- images that clearly show the branding of your product and/or packaging
- if you as a Vendor have a supplier relationship with Amazon, the vendor code
- A sample list of ASINs of your brand's products
- Information about the countries in which you sell your products
Amazon recognizes registered trademarks issued by the following government trademark offices: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, European Union, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK, United Arab Emirates, United States.
To register, open the Amazon Brand Registry website and click Get started.
When you scroll down the page, click Enroll now at the bottom. Then select a marketplace country for which you want to register your brand.
You will be taken to a login page. Log in with your Admin account of the Seller or Vendor Account to get to the registration page.
Enter all the requested data and click on Create Account.
How do I register a brand in the Amazon Brand Registry?
After the registration steps explained above, you will be taken to a dashboard and enroll a brand:
In the first step, enter the Brand Information: the exact spelling of the brand, the corresponding registration office, and the registration or serial number.
Under product information, you provide further details about your products. Upload at least one picture of your product or packaging. The name, logo, or other features must be visible on it.
In the next step Seller Account Information, provide seller account information (Seller or Vendor; if you are a vendor, Amazon also requires a vendor code).
If you don't sell your brand on Amazon yet, specify the categories that best describe your brand. If you are already an Amazon seller, list the best-selling ASINs for each product category in which your brand is offered.
In the third step Sales Information, Amazon will ask if you also sell your branded items to merchants or license the items. After that, click Submit.
The review of the application may take a few days, as Amazon compares your information with the information of the Trademark Office. If everything goes smoothly, the registration will be completed within one to two weeks.
What are the costs associated with the registration?
The Amazon Brand Registry is free of charge. However, there are costs associated with the trademark registration in the state trademark registries such as the "Intellectual Property Office UK" (IPOUK) or the "United States Patent and Trademark Office" (USPTO).
Brand protection against counterfeiting and misuse
Control your product detail pages
Unauthorized changes to the product listing can harm the brand through inappropriate information. Conversion rate, number of positive reviews, and brand image decreases.
Amazon Brand Registry members have superior editing rights, making it much more difficult for third-party merchants or other parties to make changes.
Report trademark infringements
Amazon provides tools to specifically search for infringements as well as report them.
You report an infringement by clicking "Report a violation" in the Brand Registry dashboard or by clicking "Protect" in the menu and then "Report a violation".
On the next page, you can search for products, trademarks, images, or ASINs and bundle multiple infringements into one request. Indicate what type of trademark infringement it is (copyright infringement, trademark infringement, patent infringement, design infringement, book price-fixing infringement) and describe your problem.
In the last step, provide your contact information and signature and click Submit.
Proactive Trademark Protection
In addition to the manual search options, Amazon also searches for infringements automatically. The more information you provide about your brand on Amazon, the better brand registration can help you protect your brand.
For example, Amazon specifically searches its catalog and looks for products that contain your brand logo but are not stored in the Brand Registry with this brand. Modern image recognition techniques make this possible.
Access to marketing opportunities
By registering with the Amazon Brand Registry, Sellers gain access to additional brand-building efforts. Vendors also have extensive access to the services listed below without registering:
Amazon-Vine Reviews.
Amazon-Vine is an Amazon-owned review service to generate reviews. As a seller, you provide free copies of your products for product testers to post customer reviews about them.
A+ Content
With the help of A+ Content, additional text and image elements can be added to the product listing to present the product in detail and explain unique selling points in more detail.
Brand Store
Through a Brand Store or Brand Shop, customers can get to know your brand better and view your product range. Within the Brand Store, customers will only encounter products from your brand.
Sponsored Brands
With Sponsored Brands, it is possible to display ads specifically for selected Keywords and on product detail pages. They link to the Amazon Brand Store or an individual landing page. They increase brand awareness and increase the visibility of products.
Brand Analytics
Brand Analytics allows you to monitor your business performance, sales trends, product performance as well as traffic and conversion rates.
Amazon Transparency Program
The Amazon Transparency Program is another way to protect your products and build customer trust.
You attach so-called Transparency Codes to your products so that they can be sold safely against counterfeiting.
When the products arrive at the logistics center, the codes are scanned to ensure that only original products are shipped to customers. Customers can use the Transparency app to authenticate units.
The program is offered in Germany, the USA, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and India. Brands can register their entire product portfolio or only selected products.
Register free of charge using the contact form on the website.
Amazon Project Zero
Amazon Project Zero gives sellers the ability to find counterfeits themselves and remove them with a self-service tool.
The data collected about the removed products will help Amazon's automated search system find similar infringements in the future.
Requirements to participate are:
- Registration with the Amazon Brand Registry.
- You must be the rights owner of the brand
- You have submitted notices of potential infringement with an acceptance rate of at least 90% in the last six months
You can check if you are eligible for Project Zero in the Brand Registry.
Conclusion
You can continue to sell on Amazon without enrolling in Amazon's brand registry, but you will miss out on the benefits mentioned above. You will miss out on brand protection as well as valuable marketing efforts.
Note: if you signed up for trademark registration before 04/30/2017, then you will need to register again in the new version.
