Amazon brand protection programs

Last updated on: January 16, 2023

After successfully completing part 1 and part 2 of our guide to remove counterfeits on Amazon, there’s still work to do if you want to keep your brand free of fakes. 

There are a couple of useful tools that Amazon offers to brands to help them with their brand protection efforts on Amazon, namely Amazon Brand Registry Amazon Project Zero, and Amazon’s transparency program.

Table of Contents: 

• How to remove a counterfeit on Amazon (Part 1) 
• How to report an infringement on Amazon (Part 2) 
• Amazon brand protection programs (Part 3)

Top Amazon brand protection programs you should know

AMAZON BRAND REGISTRY 

Now that your reports have been filed, and you await confirmation from Amazon, Red Points urges IP owners to sign up for the Amazon Brand Registry. 

If your brand is registered with a trademark, then this Registry offers a number of benefits.

• It grants far more control of products listed on Amazon to the proper owners of the IP.

• It can help customize product information on the listing.

• It lets you streamline ad approval.

• It helps remove sellers who infringe upon your IP. 

You can sign up for Amazon Brand Registry at: https://brandservices.amazon.com/ 

Why it’s important to protect your brand on Amazon

Unfortunately, due to Amazon’s popularity, there are many fraudsters and cybercriminals lurking on the platform, looking for opportunities to exploit your brand.

Here are a few different types of attacks you may face as a merchant on Amazon:

1. Trademark/copyright/patent IP infringement: for example, when a cybercriminal impersonates your store and/or sells counterfeited goods from your brand.
2. Listing hijacking: also called piggybacking, is when another merchant “steals” the Buy Box away from your product by selling a counterfeit version of that product at a lower price.
3. False infringement claims: fraudsters may wrongly claim that you’ve infringed their IP, which may cause your listing or your store to be suspended.
4. Listing sabotage: another merchant may change your listing’s copy, images, and information to confuse customers.
5. Fake reviews: pretty self-explanatory; attackers may attempt to sabotage your store by sending fake one-star reviews. In rarer cases, the attacker may also flood your listing with fake 5-star reviews to trick Amazon’s algorithm into flagging your listing.

This is a non-exhaustive list, and there are many other ways cybercriminals can attack your brand on Amazon. 

If you are committed to growing as a merchant on Amazon, then you should definitely be proactive in protecting your brand.

How you can protect your brand on Amazon

Use Amazon Seller Central’s two-step login

Set up two-factor authentication on your Seller Central account. 

By doing so, Amazon will text or email you a one-time password every time you log in to your account. This can protect your account even when your credential is compromised.

Invest in real-time Amazon Brand Protection service

Red Points offer a comprehensive Amazon brand protection service to automatically identify and remove IP infringements on Amazon in three key steps:

1. Detect:  leveraging AI-powered bots to scan Amazon for potential infringements every hour. Red Points also leverage advanced image recognition technology to identify trademark, patent, and brand infringements on Amazon listings’ photos.
2. Remove: automatically enforce against the infringing merchants using your registered trademark, patent, or copyright in order to remove fraudulent listings. Red Points will set up automation rules to instantly start the enforcement process on a case-by-case basis.
3. Measure: provide analytics and reports to measure the impact of Red Points’ brand protection actions for your brand.

Join Amazon Brand Registry

Joining Amazon’s Brand Registry will provide you with the following benefits:

• Allows you to more easily report IP infringers (you’ll get faster responses)
• Allows you an easier time fixing incorrect listing information
• Gives access to various exclusive marketing and security tools

Keep in mind that to be eligible to apply to Amazon’s Brand Registry, you’ll need to be a legally registered trademark.

Use Amazon Transparency on your products

If your brand is a registered trademark, you can also take advantage of Amazon’s Transparency program. 

Basically, you can apply Transparency codes to your product, and Amazon will scan these Transparency codes to ensure only authentic units are shipped to customers. This can prevent fraudsters from selling counterfeit goods of your brand.

Use Amazon Brand Gating

Brand Gating on Amazon protects your brand (or specific ASINS) to stop fraudsters and especially counterfeiters from exploiting your brand.

To apply for Brand Gating, you have to be a registered trademark and must be able to provide evidence of counterfeit activity on the specific ASIN you’d like to gate.

While applying for Brand Gating is difficult, and there’s no guarantee of success, it is a very powerful means to protect your brand from various attacks and infringements. 

AMAZON PROJECT ZERO

Released in March 2019, this is Amazon’s latest and most ambitious response to counterfeiters that operate in the marketplace. It provides three main benefits to participating brands: 

• Automated IP protection. 

• Self-service counterfeit removal, both offered for free. 

• Product serialization; available as an optional paid-for feature. 

You can learn more about Amazon Project Zero in our blog post on the topic. You can currently join the waitlist for enrollment in the beta program at: https://brandservices.amazon.com/projectzero 

AMAZON TRANSPARENCY PROGRAM

Introduced in 2017, the program is designed to identify and eradicate counterfeit products from the platform. It works by having ‘protected products’ pass an additional authentication process before they can reach the final delivery stage. 

The company tested the tool by first launching it for its own line of products as a pilot. It now, however, is available in a number of countries including the United States, Germany, Canada, France, India, Australia, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The company plans to introduce the concept in other marks in the future.

OTHER MARKETPLACES AND PLATFORMS

If you’ve found counterfeit products on Amazon, the chances are you’re going to find them elsewhere, too. They may be in other marketplaces, social media networks, or even rogue sites. That’s why we urge you to check other major sites scouting for fakes – the best defense is a good offense and you will find it much easier to protect your brand if you are prepared even before the counterfeit products start appearing. 

It’s very important to protect your IP across all online marketplaces, not just on Amazon. So take a look at our guides for counterfeit removal from all the major platforms, you can find the index here. 

Removing counterfeits from Amazon can be a daunting task depending on the number of infringements found, if you are in a situation where you can’t cope with all the infringements found on Amazon and other platforms, be advised that technological solutions such as Red Points’ Brand Protection Software could be just what you need. 

We hope this guide has been a useful defense against online counterfeiters. However, counterfeiters don’t give up easily and are likely to return. Red Points can provide a free scan of online marketplaces and see if your products are being sold elsewhere without your knowledge. If this interests you, request a brand scan here.