We understand you. It’s “catch 22” in a way: in the US, you can’t register a trademark until you begin sales but you can’t get in the Brand Registry until you have a registered or pending trademark. On top of this, being an Amazon seller you need to be adaptable as you don’t know what products you will be selling next year. So what should you do?

Let’s break this into pieces:

1. You need a registered trademark to get into Amazon Brand Registry and to get full protection for the products you sell. You may also get in the Brand Registry with a pending trademark but you won’t be able to remove hijackers until your trademark registers.

2. A trademark is always filed for specific products and each category (class) of products comes with the Trademark Office filing fee (aka government fee).

You can’t file a “generic” or “umbrella” trademark without identifying the specific products in the trademark application.

3. It means you need to come up with a mini-business plan and itemize the products you may be selling in the next year. This may require product research and brainstorming.

4. Once you have the list of products or at least a general category, we can do an initial trademark search.

5. In order to file a trademark, we’ll need to know actual products that you sell or will be selling in the foreseeable future. We can finalize them once we begin working on your trademark application. If you provide us with a general category, we can write a product list for you, but we do need your initial input.

Please note that registrations are granted only for specific products or services that are listed in your trademark application and NOT for the whole class. Additionally, please remember that registration of your trademark does not give you a monopoly for other products and services not covered by the registration (unless those other products and services are considered “related”, i.e. similar). Examples of similar products: clothing and bags; jewelry and watches; toys and educational books; cosmetics and creams; tea and coffee.

We invite you to check our articles on this subject:

11 Trademark Tips: how should I list products and services in my trademark application?

What Every Business Should Know about Trademarks Registration?

Note: no use prior to registration is required in Canada, the UK, EU,  Brazil, Japan, China,  and Australia.

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