Trademarks for Amazon sellers
Brand Registry asks for a trademark, which is how most sellers end up here. The part nobody warns them about is how long registration takes.
If a marketplace has told you to get a trademark before you can enrol a brand, the filing itself is the easy part. The timing is what catches people out.
Trademark registration is not quick. An application moves through examination, a publication period and then registration, and that sequence runs for months rather than weeks — longer if the application draws a refusal. Sellers usually discover this after committing to a launch date.
Marketplace enrolment requirements change from time to time and differ by region. Check the platform’s current documentation for what it accepts today rather than relying on any summary, including this one.
The decisions that are expensive to reverse
Most of what goes wrong in a seller’s application is decided in the first hour of filling in the form, and costs a great deal more to undo later than to get right at the outset.
Whose name it goes in
An application filed by the wrong owner is a problem that follows the mark for its whole life. If a company holds the business, the mark generally belongs with the company rather than with a founder personally — and correcting that later is not always a simple amendment.
Word mark or logo
These protect different things. A word mark covers the name however it is written; a figurative mark covers the particular design. Sellers frequently file the stylised logo they have just paid a designer for, and are surprised to find the protection sits closer to that artwork than to the name they actually trade under.
The classes you file in
Registration is granted for particular goods and services, not for a name in the abstract. A seller who files for the products in today’s catalogue and then expands into a new category can find the new line sitting outside the registration.
Clear the name before you commit to it
The expensive version of this problem is not a refused application — it is discovering a conflict after the packaging is printed, the listings are live and the domain is bought. A search beforehand costs a fraction of a rebrand.
This is the same work the firm does for apparel and consumer brands generally, whether or not a marketplace is involved.
Ask us to clear your brand — first consultation free
This page is legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney–client relationship.