These trademarks are not slogans though. Argh this is so annoying trying to come up with examples without giving up what we sell.
So… for example Apple iPhone.
To me, I consider “Apple” the brand and “iPhone” as a trademark (not a brand). Are you saying “iPhone” is technically a brand?
No … Apple is the brand … iPhone is a trademark description of the item.
Apple goes into Brand Registry.
iPhone is not in Brand Registry and the trademarked word would be enforced by Apple’s lawyers.
With out Apple’s lawyers involved, Amazon does nothing.
Okay got it. I guess what confused me is why would Amazon even allow you the ability to add a trademarked word then? What is the benefit of adding it if I could?
And going back to my original question that I still have not figured out… why won’t brand registry let me add it even though I showed them proof that we own it?
Where have you seen this option? I didn’t know this existed.
BC Brand Registry is supposed to be solely for IP that is related to a brand name, at least that’s what I know of it.
When you register anything with Brand Registry it becomes a brand on Amazon and it goes into your list of “Brand Names”. I’m unaware of any other workflow for IP on Amazon where you would see a list of other IP you have registered or got into Amazon for enforcement purposes.
You are able to show that you own the trademarked word(s) but you are not able to show that those trademarked word(s) are on items as the Brand Name because they are not brands … just trademarked word(s). Trademarked word(s) can be used as product names, advertising jingles or even part of product descriptions or even product designs.
Grant it … you can not have a Rand iPhone for sell without having Apple taking you to court for IP infringement for the use of iPhone as part of the products name.
In short, you are trying to get Amazon Brand Registry to protect your IP rights established through trademarked word(s). That is not part of Amazon Brand Registry function.
Your lawyer(s) would be the ones to protect your IP rights which would be provided to both the seller committing the IP infringement and Amazon.
As @ASV_Vites stated, it can be done but it will cost money to do so.
Holy crap… I didn’t even know this was a thing… Sorry. This is why I didn’t understand the thread. Now it makes sense plus it should have worked…
Gotta give this a try soon…
You can add additional trademarks to a currently enrolled brand as long as the trademarks are
It is helpful when Pepsi changes their trademark logo design, but not the name.
How does this make sense? Weird… Adding a TM to a brand that already exists and is in BR, because they are asking the brand that the add is connected to…
When I have some time, I am going to give it a shot just to see what happens.
This may all boil down to how the marks were entered.
In our instance we have:
Our company name, which is a brand holding company essentially.
Then we have our brands
Then we have taglines, design marks, and exclusive features that are all Trademarked under the company name, not the brand name.
But all of the images at the USPTO show the labels, which have the brand but that sounds way too sophisticated for Amazon to understand. 
Well I was hoping it would work but because our brand in Amazon “Apple” doesn’t match the owner of the trademark shown as “Owner: Apple Computer Inc.”.. they won’t add it.
Even when in the USPTO “Apple” trademark shows owned by “Apple Computer Inc.”
This is my original question and issue that I am asking for help with lol.
So what you are saying is this:
If my company name is Steve’s Awesome Supplements, and that’s what is registered as the brand owner of “Awesome Supplements” at the USPTO, and that brand was successfully added to brand registry, if we go and add “Amazing Tabs” which is our mark for our brand and the TM is on our Awesome Supplements labels, we can’t add that mark because Steve’s Awesome Supplements is the company name at the USPTO for that second mark?
How does that make any sense. How could Amazon expect the brand name to be the company name for the majority of brands. Regardless, we are going to give it a shot just for ■■■■■ and giggles.
If this was universally Amazon’s policy, how has everyone registered their brand under the same scenario above??? Amazon is normally pretty good about staying consistent for better or worse when it comes to legal ■■■■ and IP.
Yup, that is why I made this post lol.
The fact that the brand name that is trademarked… has the same owner name as the trademarks I’m trying to add is not acceptable to them. The trademark owner name has to be exactly as the branded name. Even when you tell them it is a DBA and have proof on USPTO that it is a DBA.
Let’s see what happens when I give this a shot. I still can’t believe it. I believe it but I don’t believe it.
I’ll use our SAS manager / SAS escalations to get it forced in one way or another.
There might be something else in play. Amazon needs to verify and every search we try right now in USPTO results in this notification …
If Amazon can’t verify, Amazon will deny.
You might need to wait until USPTO is back up and running properly again.
If I may attempt to help - trademarks that are artificial “Amazon store names” are most of what Amazon sees - a pathetic attempt by someone selling cheap plastic goods from China to differentiate it from the same exact product sold by dozens of other sellers who buy the same exact cheap plastic item from China.
Then there are true Brands, for example Nike and Nikon. They are operating as true brand names, in that they have a valid existence outside of Amazon, and they are a indicator of origin for a range of similar products.
Then there are smaller brands, which are often the name of a product. The name of the product is trademarked, but their is no “brand” hovering over it and the other products made by the same manufacturer. I am one of these - I have several trademarks, each unique to a product, and each is registered with Amazon’s “brand registry” as well as with the USPTO. I have no brand for everything I sell, as I make and sell unrelated items to widely divergent markets.
Each trademark has an owner listed at the USPTO, so one needs to create an Amazon brand registry account for each unique owner email address associated with a USPTO trademark, even if there is a different one for each trademark. The email listed at the USPTO will be used by Amazon to make contact and verify that the application for inclusion in the “brand registry” is legitimate.
Now, the relationship between the “brand owner” and the seller account is the tricky bit - the brand owner must delegate authority to the seller, so that the seller can file enforcement requests. One cannot file an enforcement request without a seller account, we were frustrated at this strange way of looking at the world, but there are several choices of the amount of “authority” you want to grant the seller entity from the brand owner, even if you are the same person.
So, ideally, the seller and the brand owner are two different entities, as Amazon cannot quite wrap its head around a small seller who makes a product sells it on Amazon themselves, and owns the trademark(s). Best to create a subsidiary entity for the Amazon sales anyway, so as to limit liability for product liability claims. Amazon sellers can get amazingly cheap product liability insurance, and this can keep your ISO CGL rates down, as Amazon is ummm… higher risk than other markets, just look at the “reviews” where people claim that stuff caught on fire when the item is a hunk of stainless steel.
But you can have more than one trademark on the “brand registry” managed by the same account if (and only if) you update the USPTO to make the email contact addresses the same for each of them before you apply to Amazon.
The brand registry is just incredible, as Amazon avoids all lability, and presumes to make itself equal to the courts. They have spawned a swamp of gibberish trademarks to be store names for crap no one really needs, available from dozens of wannabe middlemen, who are about to fold their tents when the expected tariffs make their crap double the current cost per unit.
Does your head hurt yet? Just remember, make a list of the email addresses listed at the USPTO, that seems to be the key to Amazon’s whole system.
Probably job cuts over there. That’s nice.
I’ll watch the news about it on PBS. Wait, no I won’t… 
I should add that this need for any specific “brand owner name” is unknown to me. All trademarks are owned by an individual (me), as the LLCs that make and sell the products pay license fees for the use of the trademark to the S-corp that is… me. Amazon never complained, but my trademarks were “early adopters” of brand registry.
Brand registry is still denying me on adding these trademarks. Guess I’ll keep re-opening cases with Brand Registry Support until they give in. I don’t know what else to do.
USPTO is back up from being down.
Pull up your trademarks in USPTO and review the section called Current Owner(s) Information. This owner info needs to match the brand USPTO registration owner info AND be what was presented to Amazon when entering into brand registry with the brand. Anything that is different will most likely cause denial.
Yes… I get that.
I feel like I am just going in circles explaining this over and over again.
