Amazon Brand Registry - Part 1: Enrolling the Brand

The best defense is the attack, promoting a brand is the best protection

Reading time: 20 minutes

Amazon Brand Registry is the Amazon program designed to protect brands on the marketplace. The program has evolved, and today it unleashes a whole set of brand services:

These services go beyond protection and enable the active promotion of a brand and its products within the Amazon marketplace.

An affirmative marketing action is the best way to defend a brand.

This article is the first of a series that will explore the many facets of the Amazon Brand Registry and its services. If you want a fast overview of the services, read our article: The Magnificient Seven. In this blog, we look at the nuts and bolts of enrolling a brand in the Amazon Brand Registry program.

Amazon Brand Registry 2.0

Amazon started the Brand Registry program in 2015 in response to a growing number of lawsuits from brands claiming for counterfeit products sold on the platform without control. In a certain sense, the program shifted the protection responsibility from Amazon to brand owners, providing them the tools to control the presence of their brand on the platform.

Amazon Brand Registry remained in a sort of test phase for a couple of years. Requisites for enrolling were simple. You could register on Amazon brands that had not passed through any trademark office registration process. There was no verification of brand ownership. That led to abuses.

On April 30, 2017, Amazon launched Amazon Brand Registry 2.0, a much more sophisticated version of the program. Brands previously enrolled had to repeat registration satisfying much tighter prerequisites. First of all, providing an official trademark and demonstrating its ownership.


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Amazon regions and marketplaces

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Amazon organized Brand Registry by country marketplaces

To be eligible for Amazon Brand Registry, a brand must have an active registered trademark in each country where the brand owner wishes to enroll. The program is not available in China.

Amazon marketplaces and trademark offices

Click on the red button to go to the country trademark office and on the blue one to go to the Amazon marketplace.

Getting a trademark

Amazon has a regional organization. Each region has many national marketplaces. There are 16 marketplaces, but the Brand Registry program is available only in 15 of them.

To be eligible for Amazon Brand Registry, a brand must have an active registered trademark in each country where the brand owner wishes to enroll.

Obtaining a trademark is not so complicated as it can seem, but it is a long process. It can last from six months to a year, depending on the country and the workload of the country’s trademark system.

Recently, Amazon introduced a shortcut for brands that do not have a registered trademark. It is possible to enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry program for brands with a pending trademark application filed through Amazon IP Accelerator. We will analyze the Amazon IP Accelerator program in another article of this series. In short, Amazon makes available a set of law firms with trademark practices through its Service Provider Network. It is up to the brand owner to select and pay the firm. After the start of the process, Amazon invites the brand to enroll in the Brand Registry program. If the authorities deny the trademark registration, the brand will get a suspension from the Brand Registry Program.

The trademarks accepted by Amazon are text-based marks or image-based mark with words, letters, or numbers.

If you have to register your trademark from scratch, consider always starting with a word without any font, color, or style specification and no image. Then you can add registrations with more specific requirements. The big brands start this way. Having a trademark registered with a simple word avoids future claims of the same logo with just a different color.

Amazon also accepts trademarks registered with the European Union,for the European marketplaces. Instead, Amazon does not recognize trademarks registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

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Text-based marks

 


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Image-based mark with words, letters, or numbers

To enroll in Amazon Brand Registry, you will need the trademark registration number and the exact name as registered.

You can look for your trademark registration number clicking on the appropriate button of the country trademark office site listed above or going to the European Union database. From there you can always reach the country registration,

 

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Pre-enrollment checklist

The Brand Registry enrollment process is a step that you cannot delegate outside of your organization. Even if the person who executes the process is internal to your organization, be sure to have precise control of the email address and the Amazon account used in the process. The process is going to establish the ownership of the brand in front of Amazon and the referent for that ownership.

Before starting the registration process, you will need the following information at hand:

  1. The brand name with an active registered trademark.

  2. The associated government-registered trademark number.

  3. An Amazon account. 

  4. A list of product categories (e.g., apparel, sporting goods, electronics) in which the brand should be listed.

  5. A list of countries where your brand’s products are manufactured and distributed.

  6. The contact associated with the registered trademark at the trademark office record.

We already went through the first two points. Let us now look into the other four, as there are delicate nuances.

Amazon account

You do not need an Amazon account to initiate the process. If you do not have it, you will receive guidance to create one. You do not need a professional seller account that has a monthly fee, just an Amazon account.

Product categories

During the enrollment process, the system will ask you which categories you consider to list the brand. These are Amazon categories! Take some time to know them and understand where it is better to be registered. Consider that these categories are slightly different from country to country.

Countries where the products are manufactured and distributed

List the countries where you produce the brand products and the ones where your brand distributes them. If you discover that your products are sold through Amazon in some countries without your knowledge, and you are planning to sell there, list those countries! After the enrollment, you will need a cleanup process of products and sellers, but that is another story. To better understand this point, here is an example. A European brand owner that we support wants to enter the US market through Amazon. His brand registered with the USPTO, so our advice is to register the brand on the US Amazon Brand Registry. This enrolment will permit the use of all the Amazon brand services to launch the brand and the products in the US market. We discovered that the brand products are already sold on Amazon US during our initial Amazon brand analysis, without the knowledge of the brand owner. In this case, the suggestion is to list the USA as a country where it is sold. After the brand’s successful enrollment, we will support the brand owner in the analysis of each product listing and of its sellers to decide the appropriate action.

Contact associated with the registered trademark

Check on the country’s official trademark database, which is the contact associated with your trademark. This contact person will own a small but fundamental step in the enrollment process.

Be sure the contact information is updated in the official trademark database, especially the email address. If the contact is not in your organization, like a lawyer, call him and explain what will happen and what she has to do. She will receive a verification code she has to pass to you. Without that code, your enrollment process will block!

Amazon Brand Registry enrollment process step by step

Step 1: Select the country

To start the enrollment go to the Amazon Brand Registry page and click on Enroll Now 

The following pop-up will appear, asking you to select the country marketplace you want to enroll in the brand.

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Select the country. You will have to repeat the process for each country marketplace where you want your brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry.


Step 2: Log in to Amazon

Now, the program will ask you to sign-in. If you have an Amazon account, like the one your company utilizes to buy on the platform, use it. Use a company account, in any case. The domain of your account is essential.

If you do not have a company Amazon account, click on Create your Amazon account. You will start a process to create one.

It is important to remark that this is just a free Amazon account. You are going to register your brand, not enrolling in selling products!

Step 3: Brand eligibility

The process starts, and the system will ask two questions.

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Your answers are likely the ones in the picture.

If your products do not have a brand and logo permanently affixed or you want to enroll more than ten brands, sincerely, I do not know what happens. Still, I do not think it is going to be good!

Be careful: type your brand name correctly, as in your official trademark record. Note that the brand name is case sensitive. myBrand is different from MyBrand.

A small mistake here can be the source of a considerable waste of time later on.

When you finish, click on the “next” button.

Step 4: Intellectual property

Here is where you input your mark name and your trademark registration number.

You also have to select if the trademark is a word mark or a design mark.

The Mark name has to be equal to the Brand name to register you recorded in the previous step.

If you select a design mark,the program will ask you to upload a high-resolution image of the logo.

Input the trademark registration number in the field Trademark number and select the appropriate Trademark Office.

When you finish, click on the “next” button.

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Step 5: Identification

This section can appear or not during the enrollment process.

When it is present, it requests the following:

Upload of product images: you can upload up to ten images of 1.5MB or less. Images must show your products with visible branding. This action is not about loading the pictures of all your products. This request aims to see your brand on your products.

Upload of packaging images: you can upload up to ten images of 1.5MB or less. Images must show your packaging with visible branding.

Upload of brand logo image: upload your logo, not a photograph of it.

Finally, you are requested to indicate your brand online presence:

  • Brand website;

  • Brand social media page.

These fields are optional, but their absence may prevent brand approval.

Coherence is the key. Your brand has to appear with the same image and text everywhere.

There is no reason it should not, but if there are inconsistencies, fix them in advance.

When you finish, click on the “next” button.


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Step 6: Characteristics

This is the final step and asks for a certain amount of information. Still, in the end, there is the Submit application button!

First question: Do your products have UPCs, ISBNs, EANs or other GTINs?

GTIN stands for Global Trade Item Number, a standard developed by GS1. GS1 is a not-for-profit organization that develops and maintains global standards for business communication.

The GTIN standard has incorporated all the following codes into a universal number space:

  • International Standard Book Number (ISBN);

  • International Standard Serial Number (ISSN);

  • International Standard Music Number (ISMN);

  • International Article Number (which includes the European Article Number and Japanese Article Number);

  • some Universal Product Codes (UPCs). 

If you want to know more, click on the links to go to the relevant Wikipedia page.

Here you have just to answer YES or NO. After the enrollment you will have to declare which kind of GTIN you are going to use as the key attribute value.

Consider that Amazon uses the couple brand name and key attribute of each product listing to gather the products under the brand.

You may want to use your Manufacturer Part Number, Catalog Number, or another unique product identifier that is not a GTIN. In that case, you will have to answer NO and submit a GTIN Exemption Request.

Second question: If you sell your product online, let us know where

This question is optional. The answer is a website where you sell your products. Be careful: this must be YOUR website, not a third party one. 

As you can see below, Amazon explains why this website address is essential. They will use it to verify your brand ownership.

If your website, where you sell your products, is of the kind:

www.myBrand.com

you can safely put it there. If your site has a different sort of address, without a visible link to your brand name, or if you do not sell your products there, leave it blank! 

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Third question: Does your brand have an existing Seller or Vendor relationship with Amazon?

A Seller here is somebody selling ON Amazon through the Seller Central platform. If you are doing this, you have an email address that is your Seller Account.

A Vendor here is somebody selling TO Amazon through the Vendor Central platform. If you are doing this, you have an email address that is your Vendor Account.

You may be both a Seller and a Vendor.

Depending on your answer, one, two, or no input box will appear. Input your Seller email address and/or your Vendor email address in the appropriate field.

As Amazon says, they will use this information to link your Brand Registry account to your existing Seller and/or Vendor account.

Last section: Manufacturing and licensing information

Here is a bug! If you click on Why is this important you will find the same explanation for the previous section. The title is self-explaining. Amazon is trying to gain insight on who manufactures your branded products and whom others sell your products or use your brand. This information can be useful in case of future disputes.

Fourth question: Does your brand manufacture products?

If you own your production facility, reply YES, otherwise, if you use a third-party manufacturer, reply NO.

If you reply YES, a subquestion will appear: Does your brand sell to distributors?

If you say YES, you will receive another question: Do your distributors sell on Amazon?

Reply YES or NO on the base of what you do.

The aim of this sequence is precise. Amazon is trying to assess the risk of issues, and you can expect some questions during the approval process.

Fifth question: Does your brand license your trademarks to others who manufacture products associated with your intellectual property?

Trademark licensing means that a trademark owner (Licensor) grants permission to another (Licensee) to use that trademark on mutually agreed terms and conditions. In such a situation, you are the brand owner, but you have agreements that permit someone else to produce something using your trademark.

If you do have licensed your trademark, reply YES, otherwise reply NO.

Also, in this case, if you reply YES, a further question will appear: Do your licensees sell on Amazon?

The aim of the sequence of questions is precise. Let us suppose that you have a trademark registered for drinkware. You have success, and you decide to permit a manufacturer to produce a set of wine glasses using your brand. Let's now suppose that the manufacturer also sells on Amazon. In that case the answers would be YES and YES.

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Amazon wants to know if something like this is happening. Of course, if you license your brand to others, they are entitled to use it, and you cannot claim any intellectual property infringement about them.

The last two questions already received an explanation. Just list the countries where your products are manufactured and distributed.

Now you can click the Submit application button, and your application is complete!

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After you finish the application, you will land on the Brand Registry Home Page, where you will see that you have one brand under review.

Consider that you can register multiple brands unrelated or related between them.

So you can have multiple brands in different stages at the same time.

Amazon Brand Registry approval process step by step

Clicking the Submit application button triggers the approval process. Two things will happen in a matter of seconds:

  • You (the applicant) receive an email notification that a case has been open concerning your application to enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry.

    • The email contains:

      • a link to the case;

      • the request to reply to the case (not to the email!) with the verification code sent to your trademark correspondent registered at the trademark office.

    • The email also provides the trademark correspondent email address that received the verification code.

  • Your trademark correspondent gets an email with a verification code asking to share it with the applicant and confirm that it was shared. The confirmation is a simple email reply that says: "I confirm I shared the verification code". To be polite, she can add greetings and salutation.

The speed of the process shows the degree of integration between Amazon systems and the trademark offices’ ones. They are extremely fast in retrieving the trademark correspondent email from the official records.

Amazon will wait for both:

  • your reply to the open case with the verification code and the case number through the link provided in the email you received;

  • your trademark correspondent email that confirms she shared the verification code with you.

After receiving the trademark correspondent confirmation, Amazon will send her an acknowledgment releasing her from any further involvement.

After the applicant reply to the case with the verification code, AND the trademark correspondent confirmation, are both received by Amazon, they will review the application. They will respond in three possible ways:

  1. Refuse the approval providing reasons, in this case you will have to follow up.

  2. Make additional questions, in this case, it is advisable you answer fast to reduce approval time.

  3. Approve your application!

The following graph represents the overall process. Consider that it can be completed in twelve hours from start to end, as we directly experienced.

Of course, several things can go wrong. For example, the trademark correspondent cannot receive the email. Amazon can also take some time to evaluate the application. The entire flow, in any case, should not last more than a couple of weeks.

In the following paragraphs, we will show you the emails involved in the process.

Amazon Brand Registry approval process

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A double step verification flow

Amazon Brand Registry approval is a double step verification process that involves the applicant and the trademark correspondent registered at the trademark office. Despite its complexity, it can finish in twelve hours!

Email notification of the open case to the applicant

Below is the email you will receive as an applicant from Amazon. We made bold the relevant parts of the text. Note that you do not have to reply to this email. To answer, you have to click on the link at the end and access the case.

Hello from Brand Registry Support,


Case ID: 6674893xxx

Brand Name: myBrand


Thank you for your interest in Amazon Brand Registry.

We have provided a verification code to the public contact listed on the agency website where the trademark for myBrand is registered.

The information available from the agency follows.


Trademark Correspondent First name: John

Trademark Correspondent Email address: john.smith@myBrand.com


To receive the verification code, contact the Trademark Correspondent.

Additionally, the Trademark Correspondent is required to confirm with Brand Registry once they have shared the code with you.

The verification code, along with confirmation from the Trademark Correspondent, will verify that you are approved to enroll myBrand

in Brand Registry.


Reply to this case in your Case Log within 30 days providing the verification code and case ID for this application.

Once the Trademark Correspondent confirms they have shared the verification code, you will then receive an email to confirm

your approval for Brand Registry.


The case ID for your application is: 6674893xxx


If you did not apply for Brand Registry, contact us through www.amazon-brand-registry.com/contact_us immediately.

For any other questions, reply in the Case Log.


Regards,

Amazon Brand Registry


To contact us again about this issue, please access your case using the link shown below (Brand Registry account login required):

https://brandregistry.amazon.com/gp/case-dashboard/view-case.html?caseID=6674893xxx


Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

The reply to this email can be straightforward. Get the verification code from your trademark correspondent, go to the case and reply:

Hi there,
here is the verification code: 68d257f65adf9fxyxyxy2c965fc4de615
Best regards

Email with the verification code sent to the trademark correspondent

Below is the email the trademark correspondent will receive from Amazon. The reply to this email can be just: “I shared the verification code.”

Note that the trademark correspondent does not receive any information about the applicant. The applicant has to contact the trademark correspondent and asks for the verification code.

As defined in the email, the trademark correspondent is the gatekeeper for the brand! That is why you have to check the correctness of the trademark correspondent information in the trademark office. It is an excellent practice to contact the correspondent in advance, asking to forward you this email as soon as received.

Greetings,

You are listed as the contact for the registered trademark for myBrand.

Please confirm the information below to validate the identity of the individual seeking to enroll myBrand in Amazon Brand Registry.

We are unable to give you the applicant's name, but we asked them to contact you.
To give the applicant approval to enroll myBrand in Brand Registry, provide them with the verification code listed below.
If you do not want to grant access, do not provide the code.
After the brand is enrolled with the correct Rights Owner, they can enroll additional users with limited or customized roles.


Verification code: 68d257f65adf9fxyxyxy2c965fc4de615

Please confirm once the verification code has been shared with the applicant by replying to this email within the next 30 days.
To be accepted, the confirmation must be sent from the same email address that received the verification code.
If you have not confirmed within the allotted timeframe, the individual’s request to enroll the brand in Brand Registry will be rejected.


Brand Registry helps Rights Owners protect registered trademarks on Amazon and create a more accurate and trusted experience for customers.
As the gatekeeper for myBrand, your role is very important.
Enrollment in Brand Registry gives Rights Owners access to powerful tools including proprietary text and image search in addition
to increased authority over product listings that have your brand name. For more details, see https://brandservices.amazon.com/.

Regards,
Amazon Brand Registry

Final email to the trademark correspondent

After the trademark correspondent has confirmed to Amazon that she shared the verification code with the applicant, she will receive the following email.

Practically it says: "Thanks, we are done!".

Hello from Brand Registry Support,

Thank you for the confirmation.

We will continue to work with the applicant directly through their case Application. 

Once the Brand Registry is approved we will contact him/her directly through their Case ID. No further action is needed from your end.

Best regards, 
Amazon Brand Registry Support

Final email to the applicant

If everything went smooth, or after you positively followed up with all the questions Amazon can ask you, you will receive this final email.

You did it! Your brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry.

The email is very informative and provides a summary of many activities you can now perform. We will go through them in the other articles of this series.

Note that now you can add users to your brand registry account, like a Registered Agent. So you do not have to worry about any new workload!

Hello from Amazon Selling Partner Support,

Congratulations! Your Brand Registry application for myBrand has been approved. Welcome to Amazon Brand Registry!

Your brand now has access to various Amazon Brand Registry tools, which help you actively
protect your brand on Amazon from listings and sellers that attempt to infringe on your intellectual property rights.
Here are some of the tools available to you in Amazon Brand Registry.

Report a violation: If you come across a potential infringement, refer to the Report a Violation help
page (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/brand/report-a-violation) to learn how to submit a complete and accurate report.
Once you’re familiar with how to submit an accurate report, use the Report a Violation
tool (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/brand/report-a-violation). 

Add access to other marketplaces: If you are already enrolled with Amazon Brand Registry in one country, you can add new user accounts,
manage local marketplace listings, and get local language support from Brand Registry specialists in additional countries
by taking the following steps:


1.From the Brand Registry page (https://brandservices.amazon.com/), click the flag in the top-right corner to select
the country you would like to add a new user account for.
2.Create a new Brand Registry account for the country you’ve selected using a different email address.
3.Sign in to your existing approved Brand Registry account, and then go to Brand Registry Support
(https://brandregistry.amazon.com/cu/contact-us).
4.Select “Update your brand profile”, and then click “Update role or add new user to account”.
5.Fill out the form using the email address for the new account you’ve created, and click the Send button.
6.Brand Registry will send a confirmation email once the new user account has been added.

Manage your Brand Registry account:
1.The widget on the left side of your dashboard shows all your enrolled brands at a glance.
You can also enroll a new brand (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/brand/enroll) from this widget.
2.Your Case Log (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/gp/case-dashboard/lobby.html) includes the details of any
Brand Registry Support cases you’ve submitted.
3.Your Submission History (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/brand/submission-history) includes the details of the violations
you’ve reported and their corresponding statuses.

Brand Registry Support: If you have any concerns, please contact Brand Registry Support (https://brandregistry.amazon.com/cu/contact-us).
For details on what we can help you with, read our overview page
(https://brandregistry.amazon.com/gp/help/help.html?referral=A3H38GM88SWZVD_A3A58ZWGQHNQEU).

Kind regards,
Amazon Brand Registry

Please note: your Brand Registry account will gain access to all of these features within one to two hours.

If you did not apply for Amazon Brand Registry, contact us at brand-registry-service@amazon.com immediately.
For any other questions, reply in the Case Log. 

What's next?

The very first step needed after brand enrollment in the Amazon Brand Registry is to gather all your products listed on Amazon under the brand. You link the products to the brand by selecting the key attribute value your products use. In theory, the Amazon systems would automatically collect all the brand products based on the couple brand-key attribute, but that is seldom the case.

 Most of the times, you will face one or more of the following situations:

  • The products are listed under a mistyped brand name: my-brand instead of myBrand;

  • Somebody registered some of your products under another brand name;

  • The unique key attribute value of the product is wrong.

In that case, you will have to go product by product and correct the brand name and the key attribute value. Many times this will require opening a case with Amazon support.

It is a time-consuming job you surely want to delegate. That is where a Registered Agent can start contributing.

This work is one of the things we do for brands. Finally, you did not found your company to become an Amazon expert. We did!

In the next articles of this series, we will explore all the Amazon brand services' details.

We can proudly assure you that this is the most updated and complete guide to the Amazon Brand Registry enrollment currently available on the Internet!

In any case, if you need support, you can contact us right now.

Count on a dedicated team to climb the Amazon Marketplace

Partner with us to take your brand to the next level

Key takeaways

  • Enrolling a brand in the Amazon Brand Registry program unleashes a set of services for its protection and promotion on the Amazon marketplace.

  • Amazon Brand Registry is organized by country marketplace.

  • To be eligible for Amazon Brand Registry, a brand must have an active registered trademark in each country where the brand owner wishes to enroll.

  • The Brand Registry enrollment process is a step that you cannot delegate outside of your organization. The process is going to establish the ownership of the brand in front of Amazon and the referent for that ownership.

  • Before starting the registration process, you will need the following information at hand:

    • The brand name with an active registered trademark.

    • The associated government-registered trademark number.

    • An Amazon account.

    • A list of product categories (e.g., apparel, sporting goods, electronics) in which the brand should be listed.

    • A list of countries where your brand’s products are manufactured and distributed.

    • The contact associated with the registered trademark at the trademark office record.

  • To enroll, you will need an Amazon account, but not a seller account.You can create the account on the fly.

  • The trademark correspondent is the gatekeeper for the brand. Check the information on your official trademark record and contact him/her in advance to make the process smooth.

  • The overall enrollment and review processes can finish in twelve hours. Still, it should not last more than a couple of weeks.

  • After enrollment, you will have to collect all your products under your brand. You will need the support of an experienced Registered Agent.