I think I have a commonlaw right to my business name on Amazon since I have had it 20 years on Amazon. If someone files for a USPTO trademark using my exact name, and gets the trademark, will that allow them to remove my name from Amazon and replace me with their own business, or will Amazon protect me? How would I get this question answered by Amazon?
You canât. Itâs a legal question that no one in support could even begin to offer guidance on,
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I agree with @oneida_books, this is a legal thing and amazon will not take a stand or help.
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Whatâs preventing you from investing ~$1000 to legally protect yourself and avoid legal fees to fight someone off if this happens which will be well in excess of just getting the TM for yourself?
Common law is a thing but itâs not easy or cheap to defend.
Amazon will never have your back for this. NEVERâŚ
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No doubt you are all correct. I just will have to start over; a few years back got scammed by an org claiming to be real and paid about that much, only to find out they were part of a big scam. Money lost. Time lost. But I now know how to protect myself so I guess I should just pony up the cash and file with the USPTO via a legitimate atty.
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Ouch. Sorry to hear that you got scammed.
A good attorney for this should come from a local recommendation, not Dr. Google.
Donât use Amazonâs BS accelerator. Those are just paper pushers, charge only slightly less, and donât really have your best interests in mind.
Good Luck
Steve
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Thank you. Good advice. And free! Woo Hoo!
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Ugh, sorry you got scammed.
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You can report a storefront name that infringes on your trademark and they will force the seller to change it. I donât know how exactly you do this but itâs definitely possible.
If itâs their corporation name then I donât think you can do anything about that short of suing them to force them to change their name (if you even have the right to make them do that, IDK).
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In the ordinary world itâs complicated. When you toss Amazon into the mix, forget it.
TM your Brand and move on⌠Donât cheap out on the important things. Itâs like step 1 when you start a business before you even make, let alone sell your first widget.
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Oh for sure you TM your brand, and you do so BEFORE making any product, marketing materials, or begin marketing it.
If you invest money into your new brand before itâs finalized and a big company opposes your trademark you have a problem.
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So, I will soon have a trademark application filed with the uspto for my brandâŚa name of my bookselling business. It seems they apply to sales of specific products, not generic books. Is it possible to register a brand for a bookstore name? My only concern is that since brand registry became a thing, my URL I once had to my bookstore has been contaminated so that I canât connect anyone to it; my exclusive list of available books is no longer available, even though I have been a professional seller over 20 years and used to have that privilege. Of course I spent a lot of time and effort trying to get my URL back and functioning, and of course, they said it was not possible unless I had brand registry. Any advice?
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Wait, do you have a brand or are you trying to trademark your Amazon storefront name?
If youâre trying to trademark your storefront name thatâs a waste of time. Thereâs zero brand equity or value in a storefront name, buyers could care less what the seller name is theyâre buying from.
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If you have used your business name âon Amazonâ for 20 years, then you have certainly used it ânationwideâ in the USA, and you have a perfectly legit unregistered trademark. You are the first to âuse the mark in commerceâ, so you have âpriorityâ, and in your product/service area, no one else can register that mark. Registration just makes it easier to prove to a court that you are the legit owner of the mark. The USPTO certificate is accepted as proof (but the defendant will invariably challenge the mark by claiming that the application was fraudulent, that you misled the USPTO, and so on). But the court at least starts out with a presumption that your mark is valid, and you did NOT have to prove your âpriorityâ with a boat load of evidence.
Right now, back up every screenshot you have of your AMZ listings that show the trademark, and save them with datestamps on a high quality name-brand thumbdrive, and put that thumbdrive in the safe, and make a copy on Google drive, in a new account made just for keeping snapshots of IP records.
But a trademark is NOT that hard to apply for without an attorney, you fill out a form, you pay the fee, and if the examiner has questions, they ask them in plain English. You only need an attorney to enforce a trademark, not to obtain one. Iâve done it, and you are likely far smarter than I am.
Brand registry is only possible with a registered trademark, so the expense and work has some tangible day-to-day value on Amazon, assuming that there is some value to the brand name, or the brand name is a product name, or has extensive goodwill in the real world outside amazon.
Iâve been to court twice over trademarks, and both times, the infringer so desperately wanted to settle, it was funny. Iâve been to court once over copyright, and that turned into a morass, as they decided to fight. Punchline, loser pays the other sides atty fees and costs if they are being flagrantly frivolous, and they paid.
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This is excellent advice, to be sure, but I would submit that it is not only screenshots that should be archived in this fashion, and that there should be @ least two âin-the-cloudâ copies (we ourselves use three as a minimum requirement), and that @ least two âphysicalâ copies in widely-separate disaster-protected geographical locations for each and every piece of information which this or that authoritative body sitting in judgment cannot deny as dispositive.
Admittedly, following that paradigm is neither âeasyâ to implement, nor âeasyâ to administer - but in my experience, the âeasiestâ way to do something is but-rarely
the BEST way to accomplish reaching a goal without facing unexpected/unanticipated hurdles down the ever-winding road we all wend.
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There might be some confusion here.
a. IF youâre a bookseller you donât really have a brand to worry about - you have your business name which probably reflects on your storefront name
b. In which case, the whole duplicate storefront name may be a non-issue
c. This doesnât mean you shouldnât trademark your name, you probably should, but it wonât do you any good since youâre not defending a brand and therefore not defending ip
Everything is roi - so in the end, if youâre not able to sell your bookselling business, and not defending a brand - what value does it bring to pony up $1k > for a trademark? I could have read things wrong but I think this distinction matters.
Best,
T_T
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Well yes, I am not sure it will do me much good ,except a little peace of mind.
Another scammer called me the other day threatening me that they were going to file for their client with the USPTO with my business name, unless, of course, I filed first ( and they would âhelpâ me do that"⌠yeah right.
(The record of âdeadâ applications on the USPTO are public and easily searched, and used by scammers to contact the prior victims who had filed with fraudulent companies, resulting in dead applications USPTO.)
Anyway, if I leave Amazon and want to advertise my company using the same name, could I not then advertise myself as a former Amazon seller with 20 years sales record and 99% positive feedback? And if someone else then picked up my name on Amazon, or elsewhere on the web I could then go after them if needed, having a Federal USPTO trademarkâŚright? I had two solicitations in the past from folks trying to buy my Amazon business by taking over my business name, which I think must be against Amazon policy, but suggests my business name might have monetary value?
Bottom line is while still selling on Amazon I donât want some yokel challenging my right to my business name and taking it over on Amazon, and I want to preserve my business name for possible use outside Amazon, later on.
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I can advertise my Amazon account and Storefront name on social media sites if I have a working URL on Amazon. That was in fact encouraged when I sign up with Amazon a hundred years ago. Now the URL is useless because it does not link to my exclusive store listings on Amazon.
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Have you tried?
https://www.amazon.com/s?me={insert your merchant token}
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The only matter of import is using your business name outside of amazon and protecting your ip there - so it makes sense to protect ip in this context. You should.
Goodluck!
T_T
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