Amazon Sellers Need Both Patent and Trademark Protection
To maximize sales, Amazon sellers simply cannot ignore intellectual property, or IP for short. A wise Amazon sales strategy must involve both patent and trademark registration. Undoubtedly, Amazon sellers with patents and trademark registrations will ultimately do better than those without. To cover your bases, you must:
- register your trademarks to take full advantage of Amazon Brand Registry; and
- timely patent your products to block the sales of copycats and reduce the risk of your products being perceived as imitations.
How do Amazon Sellers register trademarks and patents without breaking their budgets? Enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry is important, but not enough. Ignoring patents may come back to bite you. Our flat rate Amazon Seller packages below cover both trademark and patent applications.
Need trademarks and patents to boost your Amazon sales? Email Vic at vlin@icaplaw.com or call (949) 223-9623 to see how we can protect your IP so you can grow your product sales.
| Amazon Seller Trademark Application | Amazon Seller Trademark Search and Application | Amazon Seller Design Patent | Amazon Seller Design Patent Express | Amazon Seller Utility Provisional Patent App | Amazon Seller Novelty Search + Utility PPA | |
| Merely Descriptive Attorney Consultation | ● | ● | ||||
| Trademark Application (1 class of goods) | ● | ● | ||||
| Trademark Knockout Search of USPTO (1 class of goods) | ● | |||||
| Design Patent App with formal drawings | ● | ● | ||||
| Rocket Docket (Design apps only) | ● | |||||
| Utility Provisional Patent App (PPA incl. drawings) | ● | ● | ||||
| Utility Novelty Patent Search | ● | |||||
| Initial Filing Cost** | $450 + USPTO Let’s go | $950 + USPTO Let’s go | $990 + USPTO Let’s go | $1,990 + USPTO Let’s go | starting at $4,000 + USPTO Let’s go | starting at $5,500 + USPTO Let’s go |
**Flat Rates above do not include USPTO fees or activity after the initial filing of a patent application.
If you simply need trademark assistance, see our Amazon Brand Registry Starter Package below.
To sell your products with a lower risk of patent infringement, consider our Freedom-To-Operate (FTO) package below.
Why Patents Matter to Amazon Sellers
Imagine spending thousands of dollars and months of your life (that you cannot get back) to invest in selling a product on Amazon only to have your listing taken down. Even worse, you may find yourself on the receiving end of a patent infringement lawsuit filed in federal court.
Imagine developing an innovative product, only to find copycat listings with knockoff products priced lower than yours. Sure, you can choose to go naked without patenting your innovative products, but what recourse will you have when the knockoff products eventually show up at a lower cost than yours? When you finally decide to take action, will it be too late?
You don’t need another “IP attorney” who only handles trademarks, but can’t help you with patent issues. You don’t need a patent agent who can’t help you when patent infringement arises.
If you’re an Amazon seller serious about growing your business, you need a registered patent attorney who has:
- expertise in both patent and trademark law;
- years of experience in both IP registration and infringement; and
- flat rates for patent and trademark services.
Amazon Seller Trademark Application: Start Here to Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry
If you are not yet enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, start by finding the right brand for your products. A strong trademark should avoid two common obstacles to registration:
- being too descriptive of your goods; and
- being too similar to other USPTO trademark filings.
Our Amazon Seller Trademark Application covers the first risk by providing you with an attorney consultation to discuss whether your desired trademark would have a high risk of a merely descriptive rejection.
Amazon Seller Trademark Search and Application Package
Our Amazon Seller Trademark Search and Application package is uniquely designed to avoid or reduce both the risk of a merely descriptive refusal and the risk of a likelihood of confusion refusal.
| Amazon Seller Trademark Search and Application | |
| Merely Descriptive Consultation with Patent and Trademark Attorney | ● |
| Trademark Knockout Search of live USPTO filings for similar marks (in same class covering your goods) | ● |
| Filing Trademark Application with USPTO (1 class of goods) | ● |
| Initial Filing Cost | $950 + USPTO fees |
Our Amazon Seller Trademark Search and Application Package includes:
- Attorney consultation to avoid or lessen the risk of a merely descriptive refusal. If your initial trademark is highly descriptive, we will give you our honest opinion and help you pivot to a new mark;
- Knockout search of live USPTO filings for similar trademarks in the same class covering your goods to reduce the risk of a likelihood of confusion refusal. Our search results will contain recommendations to reduce the risk of confusion rejection, such as avoiding certain goods, adding a graphic design, removing a word, adding a word or changing a term; and
- Filing your trademark application with the USPTO for a single class of goods.
For a flat fee of $950 excluding USPTO fees, we will minimize the two most common trademark application risks: merely descriptive refusals and likelihood of confusion refusals. This will enable you to adopt a trademark with a greater probability of approval.
After advising you of the descriptiveness and similarity of your desired trademark, we will then file a trademark application for the brand that you choose. Doing this due diligence before filing your trademark application can save you thousands of dollars in response fees and 1-2 years’ worth of time in minimizing back-and-forth communications with the Trademark Office.
Once your trademark application is filed with the USPTO, you can begin to enroll in Amazon Brand Registry. A pending trademark application is sufficient to get you started.
What makes our trademark service optimal for Amazon sellers?
Other trademark services merely search for an identical mark. The challenge is to look for similar trademarks that are not identical to your desired brand.
Other trademark services do not advise you on whether your trademark is too descriptive. It takes years of arguing with USPTO trademark examining attorneys to see how they apply merely descriptive refusals.
When it comes to the possibility of a refusal based on confusion or descriptiveness, you want to err on the side of caution by avoiding both risks. Of course, you want to avoid rejections, but you also want to avoid wasting time. It will take 8-10 months before you hear back from the USPTO.
Our Amazon Seller Trademark Search and Application Package enables a smoother trademark application process by reducing the risk of the two biggest obstacles to registering your trademark: rejections based on your mark being too descriptive or too similar to prior trademark filings.
As soon as your trademark application is pending, you can begin the enrollment process with Amazon Brand Registry.
Should you file a trademark application yourself?
You may hear a lot of noise on the web about how you can save yourself a few bucks by doing it yourself. What they don’t tell you is that USPTO trademark applications now take 8-10 months for an initial review by the examining attorney (trademark examiner). So if you mess up your trademark application at the start, you won’t find out until almost a year later. And some mistakes are irrevocable.
Unless you’re an experienced trademark filer, get your trademark application filed correctly from the start by an experienced patent and trademark attorney. To save a few bucks initially, you end up robbing yourself of peace of mind, incurring unnecessary headaches and potentially spending more in the long run.
Amazon Seller Design Patent Package: Protect the Visual Appearance of Your Product
Our Amazon Seller Design Patent Package will help you protect the look of your product, not its functionality. Our flat rate of $990 includes formal design patent drawings. USPTO fees are $408 for a small entity or $204 for a micro entity.
So the total initial filing cost will be approximately $1,400 for a small entity or $1,200 for a micro entity.
Which Amazon Sellers should consider the Design Patent Package?
This design patent package can be particularly relevant for selling:
- brand new products that look different than existing products
- products that perform a known function, but have a unique appearance
- an aesthetically improved version of a known product (basically your product looks better than what’s out there)
Amazon Seller Design Patent Express Package: Expedite Your Design Patent Application
To speed up your design patent, our Amazon Seller Design Patent Express will help you save about one year’s worth of time. For a flat rate of $1,990 plus USPTO fees, this express package includes:
- conducting a prior art design search;
- filing a design patent application with formal design patent drawings; and
- submitting a Rocket Docket request to speed up the examination process and save 1 year of wait time.
Unlike a standard design patent application, a Rocket Docket request can save more than a year’s worth of wait time in the USPTO examination process. Currently, the average wait time for an initial review of a design patent application is approximately 18 months.
Our Design Patent Express Package with Rocket Docket aims to reduce that 18-month wait time by one year.
USPTO fees will amount to $1,048 for a small entity or $524 for a micro entity. So the total initial filing cost will be $3,038 for a small entity or $2,514 for a micro entity.
Amazon Seller Utility Provisional Patent App Package: Protect Functionally Unique Products
For products that contain unique functional features (how it works as opposed to how it looks), our Amazon Seller Utility Provisional Patent App Package gets Amazon sellers started on building patent rights to block competitors from selling similarly functioning products.
Keep in mind a provisional patent application (PPA) is a placeholder for obtaining a utility patent.
This package does not include the nonprovisional utility patent application which must be filed within 12 months of your provisional filing date. Additional costs will apply to draft and file your nonprovisional application.
Which Amazon Sellers should consider the Utility Provisional Patent App Package?
This Utility Patent Package can be particularly relevant for selling:
- brand new products that function differently than existing products
- products that include new or additional functional features
- products that use new materials and have new structural features
Amazon Seller Novelty Search + Utility PPA Package: Know How Patentable Your Product Is Before Filing a Nonprovisional
Amazon sellers of unique functional products may want to assess the novelty of their product before following through with a nonprovisional utility patent application. Our Novelty Search + Utility PPA Package combines a utility novelty patent search with filing a provisional patent application.
Which Amazon Sellers should consider the Novelty Search + Utility PPA Package?
This combined novelty search and provisional filing package can be particularly relevant for Amazon Sellers who:
- are serious about following through with filing a nonprovisional utility patent application within 12 months; and
- would like to assess how patentable their invention is before investing in a nonprovisional application.
FTO Search: Sell Products with Lower Risk of Patent Infringement
This FTO package makes sense for Amazon sellers who want to reduce the risk of infringing other patents. For a flat rate of $4,000, we conduct a Freedom-To-Operate (FTO) search of live patents to assess the risk of your product infringing other people’s patents. We will provide recommendations on potential product modifications, where possible, to avoid or lessen the risk of infringement.
Which Amazon Sellers should consider the FTO Package?
This defensive package can be especially relevant for selling:
- me-too products
- improved products that modify or add features to existing innovative products sold by others
- products that include newer features or technologies
- unique-looking products (function is not unique, but its aesthetic appearance is)
- improvements on existing functional products that are less than 20 years old
- design changes on existing ornamentally unique products less than 15 years old
One-Stop Shop for Amazon Sellers to Get Patents and Trademarks
Why work with multiple law firms and agencies when we can handle all your Amazon Sellers patents and trademarks as a one-stop shop?
I’ve been handling the registration and infringement of patents and trademarks since 1999, and educating the business community about patent and trademark law since 2006. Patent and trademark – they’re in the very name of our site.
Not Sure Where to Start?
For a free initial consultation, call Vic at (949) 223-9623 or email vlin@icaplaw.com to explore registering your Amazon sellers patents and trademarks. As is normal in the industry, additional costs may subsequently arise after filing your patent or trademark application.
