Can Amazon Brand Registry Protect Your Business from Counterfeits?

A customer buys a product carrying your brand name. It arrives in familiar packaging, but the quality is terrible. They leave a review warning other people against buying from your business.

The problem? You didn’t make the product they received.

Counterfeiting can leave a business dealing with reputational damage as well as lost sales. Amazon Brand Registry offers tools that can help, but using them effectively starts with understanding your rights and identifying what has actually happened.

What is Amazon Brand Registry?

Amazon Brand Registry is a free program that helps eligible brand owners protect and manage their brands within Amazon. Its protection benefits can be relevant even if you don’t sell directly through the marketplace. Amazon Brand Registry

It serves a different purpose from trade mark registration. Registering a trade mark establishes rights through the relevant legal system. Brand Registry provides access to Amazon’s platform tools.

Treat enrolment as one part of your protection strategy. It doesn’t establish worldwide ownership of your name or settle every dispute about your products.

Do you need a registered trade mark to join?

Amazon’s Australian guidance allows for registered trade marks and certain pending applications, subject to country-specific requirements. Your mark must be an eligible word mark or an image mark containing words, letters or numbers. Amazon also requires evidence of your brand permanently affixed to your product or packaging, with details matching the trade mark record. 

Before applying, check which entity owns the mark, what branding appears on your products and who controls the account.

Keep access under business control and give agencies or distributors appropriate user permissions. You don’t want to discover during a dispute that the only person who can access your account is an agency you stopped working with six months ago.

Is an unauthorised seller selling counterfeits?

Not necessarily. Consider a fictional Australian dog harness brand, Harbour & Hound.

Its founder discovers three listings:

• Harnesses falsely presented as genuine Harbour & Hound products.
• Genuine Harbour & Hound harnesses offered by an unfamiliar reseller.
• A different brand’s harness with a similar appearance.

The first raises a potential counterfeit issue. The second requires investigation into genuine resale.

In Australia, genuine products can sometimes be lawfully resold or parallel imported outside a brand’s preferred distribution network. Being an unauthorised seller doesn’t, by itself, make the goods fake. 

The third may raise separate design or branding questions. Resemblance alone doesn’t establish counterfeiting.

These distinctions guide your response. A distribution dispute, copied photograph and fake product may each require different evidence and action.

How can Amazon’s tools help?

Report a Violation provides a process for reporting suspected IP infringement and other relevant violations. Identify the listing, the particular issue and the evidence supporting your report. 

For eligible brands, Project Zero offers self-service counterfeit removal. Access has additional requirements; joining Brand Registry doesn’t automatically qualify you. Amazon also recommends test purchases to confirm suspected counterfeits. Sell on Amazon

Whichever route applies, accuracy matters. A low price or unfamiliar seller is a reason to investigate, rather than proof that a product is fake.

What should you do if you find a suspected fake?

Preserve the listing

Save screenshots, the URL, seller details, dates and the product identifier, often called an ASIN. Record the particular seller’s offer, especially where several sellers appear on one product page.

Establish what was supplied

If a customer reports a problem, ask for order details, photographs and, where appropriate, the product. A test purchase may help establish what a particular seller is supplying.

Compare against genuine stock

Check the item against the relevant manufacturing period. Older packaging, changed suppliers or a previous product version may explain a difference.

A difference deserves investigation. It isn’t always proof of a fake.

Connect the evidence to the issue

Explain why you believe the product is counterfeit. If the concern is copied photography, identify your rights in those images rather than assuming the product itself is fake.

Track the response

Keep reports, supporting material and outcomes together. If a report is rejected, review the reason and address any missing information.

Look after the customer

Give customers a clear way to raise authenticity concerns. You can explain that you’re investigating without making allegations you haven’t established.

The person who thought they were buying from your business still needs a helpful response.

Do counterfeits affect small businesses too?

In 2020, Amazon and J.L. Childress, a California family business selling travel products for parents, announced a joint lawsuit alleging counterfeit sales, including travel bags for car seats and strollers. 

The announcement described allegations, rather than a court finding. Its relevance for smaller businesses is the type of products involved: practical goods sold under a family business’s trusted name.

A brand doesn’t have to be a luxury label for someone to see value in imitating it.

Build the foundations before a problem appears

Keep an evidence file containing trade mark details, genuine product images, packaging versions and relevant manufacturing records. Retain agreements establishing your rights in commissioned photographs and other content.

Review supply contracts too. Who can manufacture products carrying your name? What happens to overruns, rejected stock and unused packaging? What marketplace arrangements have you agreed with distributors?

Assign someone responsibility for monitoring and reporting. A clear process helps your team respond consistently.

If you’re expanding overseas, review your trade mark coverage. Australian registration doesn’t automatically protect your brand in other countries. IP Australia

Removing a listing may address an immediate problem, but it may not identify the source, recover your losses or stop the stock appearing elsewhere. Repeated incidents may call for a broader response.

Start with an IP review

Brand Registry is most useful when the rights, records and commercial arrangements behind your brand are organised.

For a practical starting point, use my free IP audit to review what your business owns, what needs protecting and where there may be gaps.

You can also listen to the accompanying Elise Explains IP episode for a walkthrough of the examples and practical steps.

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. You should obtain advice tailored to your circumstances before acting on any information discussed in this episode.