Does your brand manufacture products? Do you sell on Amazon?
Whether it’s board games, toys, or home goods, every brand that’s selling on Amazon.com can benefit from signing up for Amazon Brand Registry.
Getting verified used to mean tracking down a verification code. Amazon changed that. Here’s how the verification step actually works now.
In order to get started on Brand Registry, you need to first apply. You can do that by going to the Brand Registry site and signing in with your Amazon account.
There are some requirements you need to meet before you can sign up, though. If you’re signing up for Amazon Brand Registry US, you’ll need to have a registered US trademark for the brand you’re applying for. For other countries, you’ll need a trademark in that country.
However, Amazon limits the countries that they accept trademarks from. These are:
- United States
- Brazil
- Canada
- Mexico
- Australia
- India
- Japan
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Turkey
- Singapore
- Spain
- Netherlands
- Saudi Arabia
- Sweden
- Poland
- Egypt
- the United Kingdom
- the European Union
- the United Arab Emirates
If you’ve got the required trademark, then you need to gather the following info before applying:
- Your brand name/trademark that you’re applying for.
- The associated registration number from one of the countries listed above
- The product categories that you will associate with your brand
What about the verification code?
Here’s the part that trips people up: Amazon doesn’t send a code you type in anymore.
The old process worked like this. You applied, Amazon emailed a verification code to the correspondent listed on your trademark registration (often your attorney), that person passed the code to you, and you entered it in your Brand Registry case log. Most of the guides you’ll find online still describe that flow, so a lot of sellers apply and then sit waiting for a code that never shows up.
Amazon has since replaced it. The verification now happens by link approval, and the person listed as the trademark correspondent handles it directly. Here’s what actually happens today:
- You apply for your brand on Brand Registry.
- Amazon emails the contact listed on the trademark registration. For my clients, that’s me as their trademark attorney. The subject line reads “Action Required: Trademark Confirmation for Amazon Brand Registry.”
- That email lists the applicant’s details (brand name, applicant name and email, trademark number, and trademark office) and gives the correspondent 7 days to approve or decline the request by clicking a link.
- The correspondent opens the link, confirms the details are right, and approves the enrollment.
- Amazon follows up with an email confirming the trademark verification request was approved, along with a case ID.
There’s no code for you to enter, and no code for your attorney to relay. The correspondent just clicks the approval link.
Here’s the old-style verification email Amazon used to send the correspondent (redacted). The current version drops the code and asks the correspondent to approve by link instead:
Because approval runs through the correspondent’s inbox, two things matter:
- Tell your attorney or correspondent to expect it. The email has a 7-day window. If it sits unread, the request can expire and you’ll have to start over.
- Check spam. These Amazon emails often land in spam or a Gmail tab outside the inbox. If you’re the correspondent, watch for it; if you’re the applicant, give your correspondent a heads up.
Once the correspondent approves, you should have a verified trademark in Amazon Brand Registry, and you’ll be ready to police your brand with a branded storefront and Amazon’s tools for stopping counterfeits and infringement on the platform.
Need help getting your trademark registered so you can sign up for Amazon Brand Registry? Just jump over to my contact page and set up a time to talk, or just email me at zstrebeck@strebecklaw.com.
Frequently Asked Questions about Amazon Brand Registry
Do you need a trademark for Amazon Brand Registry?
Yes, and it needs to be a registered trademark in one of the countries I listed above. Just filing an application isn’t enough.
What are the Amazon Brand Registry trademark requirements?
I discussed this in the main post, but in short, you need a registered trademark in one of the countries listed in the main post above (or a mark filed through Amazon’s IP Accelerator program). There isn’t much more to it, but you do need to know your registration number, the country it’s in, and the product types it’s connected with. If you have an attorney listed as the correspondent on the registration, they’ll receive Amazon’s confirmation email and approve your enrollment by clicking the link in it (Amazon used to send a code to enter, but that step is gone).
Additionally, from Amazon, “The trademark text must match the brand name on the application….Please ensure that this information matches before submitting your application.”
Can you use Amazon Brand Registry with a trademark on the Supplemental Register?
The Supplemental Register is a part of the US Trademark Registry that is for marks that don’t have exclusive rights. This is usually because they are “merely descriptive” and aren’t eligible for the stronger Principal Register. Since the Supplemental Register marks don’t have exclusive rights, they are ineligible for Amazon Brand Registry.
This is why it’s so important to do a proper clearance search and analysis of your trademark before you start using it or register it. If it’s not distinctive enough and only describes your goods and services, you won’t get on the Principal Register and won’t be able to register for Brand Registry.
What’s the Amazon Brand Registry contact phone number?
If you need to contact Amazon for help with Brand Registry, there aren’t many options. On the site, they offer a Contact Us page with a contact form you can fill out, and they will respond to you when they can. You can access that page here.
Unfortunately, they don’t offer a phone number to contact them.
Where is the Amazon Brand Registry login page?
If you need to log into your Amazon Brand Registry dashboard, you can do that by going to https://brandservices.amazon.com/ and clicking “Sign In”. You’ll need to select your country, and then log in with your Amazon account username and password.
How long does Amazon Brand Registry take?
If you don’t have any outstanding issues (for example, your trademark hasn’t fully registered yet), then the Amazon Brand Registry process will take about 2 weeks.
Obviously, if there are problems with your application, or the confirmation email to your correspondent gets missed and the 7-day approval window lapses, this may extend the time that it takes for you to register. Also, if you’ve just applied for a trademark application in the United States, the process for getting that trademark registered can take a year or longer. So it’s best to get that started as soon as possible!