Cannabis Trademarks: Don’t Sleep on the Amazon Brand Registry!

Although selling products that violate federal law is understandably prohibited on the Amazon platform, we have many clients that do sell their legal ancillary goods, as well as their hemp goods, on Amazon. And what many of them are unaware of is that Amazon’s Brand Registry is an excellent tool for protecting and maintaining control over your brand.

The Amazon Brand Registry gives sellers “access to tools that enable [them] to more accurately represent [their] brand, find and report violations, and share information that can help [Amazon] proactively prevent violations.” Utilizing the Brand Registry is a great way to efficiently (and cheaply) stop infringers in their tracks without having to resort to litigation. Some of the benefits of the program include:

• Users have more control over Amazon product pages that utilize their brand names, meaning that users control the way customers view their brand;
• Users have access to search and report tools that can help them find product listings on Amazon that match their products or logos and can generate reports of potential infringers to take action against;
• Amazon utilizes information provided by users about their brands to “implement additional predictive protections that attempt to identify and remove potentially bad listings, including:
  • Product listings that aren’t for your brand and incorrectly use your trademarked terms in their titles;
  • Images that contain your logo, but are for products that don’t carry your brand name;
  • Sellers shipping products from countries in which you do not manufacture or distribute your brand; and
  • Product listings being created with your brand name when you have already listed your full product catalog on Amazon.

In order to enroll in the program, your company must have:

• An active registered text or image-based trademark issued by the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K., the E.U., or the United Arab Emirates that matches the brand name on the application;
• The ability to verify your company as the rights owner or authorized agent for the trademark; and
• An Amazon account.

The first step to all of this, of course, is securing your trademark rights. If your company, whether cannabis, hemp, or otherwise, is considering selling anything on Amazon, obtaining trademark protection such that you will have access to Amazon’s brand protection tools will be crucial. We’ve written extensively about trademark protection for ancillary goods and services and for hemp, which you can read more about at the links below: