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| Oversight by an Amazon kingfisher By Kpts44 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons |
I expect that other trademark agents who have clients who are Amazon sellers have noticed that Amazon has introduced what they call a Brand Registry. There is some public information at that link but not really enough for the curious trademark agent like myself. I am not an Amazon seller so I cannot access further information that may be available to my Amazon sellers.
Some of my clients have already decided to register their brands. They supply certain information to Amazon and then Amazon sends an email to the agent. They can do this because the agent's email is stored on the USPTO register and also on the EUIPO register. The email contains a verification code which you are supposed to pass back to your client. It would also appear that Amazon sometimes call up the representative but I haven't had a call from Amazon myself.
If you have clients who let you know that they are intending to follow this procedure with a US trademark, it would be good practice to alert your US associate as they might, quite reasonably, treat the Amazon emails as spam.
Amazon seem to want word marks though I haven't received any feedback yet as to whether somewhat stylised marks qualify. Many brand owners have registered stylised marks rather than marks in standard characters. Indeed, logotype forms are often considered to be the trademark by marketers and anyone who has not been advised of the difference by a trademark agent would normally register their logotype rather than a mark in standard characters.
I have even had a client come to me simply because they want to register their mark for the purpose of registering it with Amazon. When that is the case it's important for the agent to know what type of trademarks Amazon will accept. Fortunately for this client I had already spotted the Amazon affection for standard characters.
The next big question I have is what are Amazon going to do with this Brand Registry? Is a product offered by someone other than the Amazon seller under that trademark to be blocked? What about fair use of the trademark? Is it to be prevented or are we allowing trademark owners too much power. These questions are very open because only Amazon seems to know the answers. When a mark is registered on a national register like that of the UK IPO or the EUIPO or the USPTO, the rights and defences are outlined in published law. Amazon is not a state, although it seems to behave like one and certainly doesn't seem to be publishing its laws.
I hope we can see some answers soon.
