Amazon launched the Amazon Brand Registry program to help Brands protect their Intellectual Property from infringers on Amazon. You must have a registered Trademarks copyright and/or design patents to participate in the program. Amazon does not recognize any pending Trademarks at this time.
The Brand registration process typically takes a week to be completed. Once Amazon verifies the brand owners and your brand is registered with Amazon, you can search for and submit trademark violations against sellers who may be violating your brand.
The Brand Registry program accepts the following types of Intellectual Property violations:
Trademark – Any unauthorized listing using your Trademark in the listing content or images may be violating your Intellectual Property. Typically, Chinese sellers violate the trademarks and sell counterfeit versions of your product at a low price. The impact of the counterfeits is massive. These sellers steal your sales, impact your product prices across all channels and generate negative reviews for your products.
Copyright – You can file a violation against unauthorized sellers using your copyrighted content (images and/or videos). You will need to provide a copyright number during the filing of the violation. If Amazon approves your violation, Amazon will remove the copyrighted content from the listing. Often the listing may end up with no images or videos. Amazon has recently added a search by image function. This will help in searching for copyright violators across Amazon in a single search.
Patents – Amazon only recognizes utility patents. They do not recognize design patents. The patents must be approved by USPTO. Pending patents cannot be used. In the case of patents, Amazon does not remove the listings but simply emails the seller that someone has filed a violation. Amazon will provide you email addresses for the sellers they have contacted. No physical address or business name is provided as Amazon considers it a proprietary information.
Typical experience
Once you file a violation, Amazon will acknowledge it via email. The email will look like this:
“Hello,We received your email. Amazon respects the intellectual property rights of others. After we process your notice, we will notify you by email. This usually takes 1 to 2 days. “
Resolution of the violation filed can be as quick as four hours or as slow as eight days. Depending on which Amazon team is on duty the violations are rejected or accepted.
In our experience, copyright violations are accepted more often than Trademark violations.
Accepted violation
If Amazon accepts your violation they will respond with the following email:
“Hello, Thank you for your report of infringement. We reviewed your report and removed the following content based on the information you provided. “
Rejection
The reasons for rejections are all over the map. Here are a few examples:
“Thank you for submitting your notice of infringement. We cannot take action on your report because of the reasons listed below. Amazon respects a manufacturer’s right to enter into exclusive distribution agreements for its products. However, violations of such agreements do not constitute intellectual property rights infringement. As the enforcement of these agreements is a matter between the manufacturer and the retailers, it would not be appropriate for Amazon to assist in enforcement activities. “
“Hello, Thank you for reporting your notice of infringement. We cannot take action on your report because of the reasons listed below. — The description of your copyrighted work does not match the content you reported as infringing.”
“Hello, Thank you for reporting your notice of infringement. We cannot take action on your report because of the reasons listed below. — No misuse found. If you believe this decision was made in error, please resubmit your notice of infringement with the intellectual property claim you believe is being infringed upon and the products that are infringing. “
Escalating the case:
You can escalate the case if you do not agree with the decision Amazon has made using the escalation tool.
Retracting violation
You can retract the violation against a seller if you feel that the seller did not violate your Intellectual Property. Use the retraction tool and provide Amazon information on case ID, ASIN and seller name to do so.
Conclusion – Although this program is far from being perfect, it is a good first step from Amazon to help brands protect their Intellectual Property. The program consumes to improve each week.*
* In order to successfully manage this program, dedicated resources are required. All the violations have to be filed manually.
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