Amazon Brand Registry: What It Covers and What It Does Not

Amazon Brand Registry is Amazon's free program for trademark owners. Once your brand is enrolled, you get the Report a Violation tool, search tools for Amazon's catalog, more control over your product pages and access to Amazon's other anti-counterfeiting programs. To qualify, you need an active registered trademark, or an eligible pending application, from a government office of a country with an Amazon store.

Brand Registry is useful, but it is often misunderstood. It is not a service that removes every seller you dislike, and it does not look beyond Amazon. This guide explains who can enroll, what the program actually unlocks, how to apply, why applications stall, and the gaps you still have to cover yourself.

What Brand Registry is, and who can enroll

Brand Registry links your trademark to your brand on Amazon. Amazon uses that link to give you more authority over listings that carry your brand, and to accept your reports of infringement through a guided tool rather than a public form.

Amazon's published requirements are short:

• A trademark from an eligible office. An active registered trademark, or a pending application, issued by the designated government trademark office of a country with an Amazon store. Amazon lists the accepted offices and statuses in its country-specific trademark information, and the accepted status varies from country to country.
• The right kind of mark. A word mark (text) or a design mark that contains words, letters or numbers. The text must match your brand name exactly. Differences in capitalization are accepted, differences in spaces or symbols are not.
• The brand on the product. Your brand name must be permanently affixed to the products or packaging, for example printed, sewn or etched. Amazon does not accept stickers or labels, stock images or mockups as proof.
• You as the rights owner. Amazon verifies that the applicant is the trademark owner. Agents and other users can be given roles once the brand is enrolled.

This is general information, not legal advice. Which office to file with, and which classes to cover, is a question for a trademark attorney.

What Brand Registry gives you

Brand Registry is free to join. Amazon groups its benefits into protection tools and growth tools. The protection side is what matters for counterfeits.

Tool	What it does	Notes
Report a Violation	Guided reporting of trademark, copyright and patent infringement, plus some policy violations	Search by keyword, ASIN, image or order number; up to 50 ASINs or URLs in one bulk search
Submission History	Shows the status of every report you filed	Visible on the Brand Registry homepage
Automated protections	Amazon uses the data you provide to block suspicious listings before they go live	Works in the background; you do not control it
Impact Dashboard	Shows how Amazon is protecting your brand	Useful for reporting to management
Project Zero	Lets eligible brands remove counterfeit listings themselves	Invitation-based, with a reporting accuracy requirement
Transparency	Unique codes on every unit that Amazon scans before shipping	Paid per code; you must be able to label every unit
Counterfeit Crimes Unit	Amazon team that sues or refers counterfeiters to law enforcement	Requires Brand Registry and a registered trademark

On the growth side, enrollment also unlocks tools such as A+ Content, Brand Stores, Sponsored Brands and Brand Analytics. These do not protect your brand directly, but a well-built detail page makes copies easier to tell apart.

The three advanced programs (Project Zero, Transparency and the Counterfeit Crimes Unit) each have their own conditions. Our guide to Transparency, Project Zero and the Counterfeit Crimes Unit covers who qualifies and how each one works.

How to enroll, step by step

1. Check your trademark. Confirm that it is registered, or pending with an office whose pending status Amazon accepts, and that the text matches your brand name exactly.
2. Gather the documents. Amazon asks for the registration or application number, your logo if the mark is a design mark, the product categories you sell in, photos of the brand permanently affixed to products or packaging, and website or distribution details where relevant.
3. Create the Brand Registry account. Sign in to Brand Registry. Amazon recommends using your existing Seller Central credentials, so both accounts stay linked.
4. Submit the application. Enter the brand and trademark details, upload the photos and any additional documents Amazon requests, then review and submit.
5. Pass the verification. Amazon sends a verification code to the contact listed on the trademark record, often the attorney who filed it. That person shares the code with you, and you enter it in Brand Registry.

Once enrolled, you can add trademarks from other countries under Manage intellectual property and follow the status of each application on the Brand Applications page.

How long enrollment takes

Amazon does not publish a fixed processing time. Most of the delay usually comes from the verification step: if the contact on the trademark record is slow to pass on the code, the application waits. Before you apply, check who that contact is and tell them to expect an email from Amazon.

Common reasons applications stall or fail

• The brand name does not match the trademark. An extra word, a missing space or a symbol that is not in the registration is enough to block the application.
• The wrong type of mark. Applying with a word mark when your registration is a design mark, or the reverse.
• A logo that differs from the record. For design marks, the logo you upload must match the registered one.
• Unacceptable photos. Stickers, removable labels, stock photos, digitally altered images and mockups do not show that the brand is permanently affixed.
• A trademark from an office Amazon does not accept, or a status it does not accept yet. Check Amazon's country-specific trademark information before you apply.

What Brand Registry does not cover

Brand Registry is strong inside Amazon. Its limits are just as important to understand.

Other marketplaces. Brand Registry only acts on Amazon's stores. It does nothing about the same copy on eBay, Walmart, Temu, AliExpress or a small web shop. Each of those has its own reporting program, and you file there separately.

Genuine products from unauthorized sellers. Amazon states that it respects exclusive distribution agreements, but that breaking them is not intellectual property infringement and that it will not help enforce them. A seller offering your genuine product outside your network is usually not something Brand Registry can remove. Our guide to unauthorized sellers on Amazon covers what you can still do.

Pricing. Minimum advertised price (MAP) agreements fall in the same category: Amazon treats them as a matter between you and your resellers.

The search work itself. Report a Violation includes image search, which helps with listings that do not show your name. But you still have to run the searches, store by store, review what comes back and keep your own evidence. Brand Registry does not tell you where else a copy is sold or whether a removed listing reappeared on another store.

The limits of Amazon's tools on their own

For a brand that sells mostly on Amazon, Brand Registry covers a large part of the risk. For a brand whose product is copied, it covers only one channel. Counterfeiters rarely list in a single place: the same photos often appear on several Amazon stores, on eBay and on marketplaces in other regions within days. Amazon's tools cannot see those listings, and they do not keep a record that follows a seller or a listing across platforms.

How Valigard helps before you report

Valigard searches marketplaces worldwide, including all Amazon stores, with your official product photos. Because it matches the photos rather than the text, it finds listings that reuse your images even when your brand name is not in the title. For each listing you mark as likely counterfeit, Valigard keeps the URL, price, seller details and a saved, timestamped copy of the page, and shows whether the listing was later removed or relisted. See how it works on Amazon.

Valigard does not replace Brand Registry and does not send reports: you file through Report a Violation or the relevant marketplace form, then log the status and case number. It does not determine with legal certainty that a product is counterfeit, and it cannot guarantee removal.