Article Summary
Amazon’s Brand Registry provides trade mark owners with a fast and cost-effective way to monitor and enforce their rights online. It offers proactive tools to detect and remove infringing listings, even for businesses not selling on Amazon.
Large corporates have taken big slices of the e-commerce retail pie, but Amazon stands out as a company committed to protecting the intellectual property rights of its sellers, and even its non-sellers.
Traditional trade mark enforcement measures such as court infringement proceedings can be costly and time consuming. Amazon’s ‘Brand Registry’ offers a powerful and swift alternative to enforcement actions in the e-commerce space. Amazon says its ‘Brand Registry is a free program that helps you protect your intellectual property (IP), manage your listings, and grow your business—whether or not you sell in the Amazon store’.
As one of the top online marketplaces in Australia, there is a good chance your goods (or infringing counterfeit versions of your goods!) are available for sale on Amazon, or will be soon. If you own a registered trade mark, you are eligible to enrol in Amazon’s Brand Registry, even if you don’t sell on Amazon.
CGLaw has always recommended clients seek to obtain trade mark registration for their brands. Registered marks that are enrolled in Brand Registry benefit from Amazon’s proactive watching tools. Amazon regularly monitors its platform for goods bearing marks that appear to be infringing those enrolled in Brand Registry, and will take down infringing goods, reportedly within minutes. Even if not caught by Amazon’s powerful watching tools, brand owners can report violations of their IP rights through Amazon’s Report a Violation (RAV) tool, or Report Infringement form. You can read more on Amazon’s IP FAQs here.
CGLaw assists clients in the Brand Registry enrolment process and can offer advice in relation to trade mark registration and enforcement methods. As Amazon’s watching tools only operate in relation to the trade mark registration and information provided to Amazon, we recommend clients contact our Intellectual Property + Technology Team including registered Trade Marks Attorneys Ben Gouldson and Nicola Hayden to ensure their registrations are adequate.
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