Why should Amazon sellers register trademarks and apply for patents?

With the advent of the Internet era, the global e-commerce market is developing rapidly. As one of the leaders in cross-border e-commerce, Amazon’s business covers multiple countries and regions, and is visited by a large number of users every day. In order to ensure fair competition, the Amazon platform requires sellers to register their brands in its backend, which means that no matter which country/region the seller sells products on the Amazon site, they need to complete brand certification locally, that is, register a trademark or patent.

Why you need to register a trademark and apply for a patent

Although trademarks and patents are both part of intellectual property rights, the content they protect is different. Trademarks are mainly used to protect brand identity, while patents are used to protect innovative designs of products. Specifically:

• Trademark: Registering a trademark can help prevent others from selling counterfeit and shoddy goods, enhance brand credibility, and ensure that the brand can be accurately searched. In addition, it can protect the company’s intangible assets and avoid damage to business interests.
• Patent: Patent protects the appearance design, innovative design and other aspects of the product. If you only register a trademark but do not apply for a patent, when other merchants complain to the platform based on the packaging design of the product, even having a trademark may be regarded as infringement.

Therefore, in order to fully protect product sales rights, many Amazon sellers will apply for trademarks and design patents at the same time.

Product types that can apply for design patents

As long as the shape, pattern or combination of the product, color and shape meets the new design standards that are beautiful and suitable for industrial applications, such as mobile phones, watches, TVs, computers and other electronic products, as well as daily life products such as teapots and cars, etc. Products can apply for design patents. However, the carrier of the design cannot be handicrafts, agricultural products, livestock products or natural items that cannot be remanufactured.

It can be seen from this point that not all items can apply for design patents. Trademarks cover a total of 45 categories including commodity trademarks, service marks, collective trademarks and certification marks, covering almost all types of trademark applications; while design patents mainly protect the design itself, rather than the function or structure of the product.

Benefits of applying for a patent

Protect intellectual property

By applying for patents, sellers can effectively protect their research and development results or innovative products from infringement, thereby safeguarding their legal rights and brand image.

Improve competitiveness

If unique or innovative products can successfully obtain patent authorization, it will be easier to win the trust and support of consumers, thereby increasing sales and market share. In addition, patents can also attract the attention of potential investors or partners, bringing more opportunities to the company.

Value-added effect

Companies with patent rights can earn licensing fees and other benefits by licensing others to use their technology or products. In addition, patents can also bring additional cooperation and investment opportunities to enterprises, thereby enhancing their market competitiveness.

Social responsibility

Applying for a patent helps establish a company’s professional image in the industry and shows how seriously it attaches importance to intellectual property protection and industry development.

To sum up, for sellers on Amazon, registering trademarks and applying for patents not only help protect their own rights and interests, but also play an important role in improving product competitiveness and increasing commercial value. However, in actual operation, sellers need to make reasonable choices based on specific circumstances and pay attention to relevant details.

I hope the above content can help sellers better understand the importance of trademark registration and patent application on the Amazon platform.