How to protect your Brand
on Ecommerce platform
How to Protect Your Brand on E-Commerce
We specialize in supporting and growing brands on E-Commerce. It’s the core of what we do and we are good at it! Protecting your brand on E-Commerce and applying the marketplace tools is one of the more difficult areas, yet is so significant now that over 65% of shoppers use E-Commerce as their first spending experience, your brand must be able to stand on its own without fear of counterfeit product, and unauthorized sellers.
Won’t a cease and desist letter do the trick?
As a brand owner, you can by all means contact these sellers through E-Commerce to try and help protect your business and inform them of illegal doings, but many sellers ignore these, and many also know that without the E-Commerce brand registry tools in place you are powerless to enforce them, it is also very difficult to get these items being removed from being sold on E-Commerce without brand registry.
Key Reasons to Protect Your Brand on E-Commerce
According to Marketplacepulse.com, over 70% of the idealistic generation comes to E-Commerce before any other platform, your brand should be categorically leading the category listing pages and to do this E-Commerce has created certain tools available to registered trademarks which control sellers selling your items through certain protocols. these include:
Key Reasons to Protect Your Brand on E-Commerce
According to Marketplacepulse.com, over 70% of the idealistic generation comes to E-Commerce before any other platform, your brand should be categorically leading the category listing pages and to do this E-Commerce has created certain tools available to registered trademarks which control sellers selling your items through certain protocols. these include:
- The content and design of your product pages, including videos and store pages
- Certain analytics and tools available only to brand owners
- Violation reporting of intellectual property and any trademark infringement.
- E-Commerce buy box
Protecting Your Brand on E-Commerce Brand Registry
Using E-Commerce brand registry to protect your name is becoming vital, with huge importers and fake sellers trying desperately to “hijack” good listings with good reviews and reputations – sometimes cease and desist email ands and letters do not get responses and this can lead brand owners feeling exceptionally frustrated. Unauthorized sellers can cause huge headaches for sellers, not to mention E-Commerce and ultimately the customers who rely so heavily on your brand.
E-Commerce brand registry is open to all trademark owners in their respective countries, you must have existing products on E-Commerce in order to register and preferably a seller or vendor account.
Will it mean I win the buy box?
The buy box, or E-Commerce s process of choosing the most relevant seller for a listing is NOT affected by the brand registry system. protecting your brand and stopping counterfeit products does not improve your chances of improved sales, third party sellers will have the ability to sell your product and acquire the buy box.
How Do I Stop Third Party Sellers from Selling My Brand?
Competition rules mean that you cannot stop other legitimate sellers from selling your brand on E-Commerce products, however, the brand registry tools allow you to take control of the content and design of your product detail pages and also give you the power to create violation reports to E-Commerce and stop fake counterfeit products being sold on the platform., creating violations for your brand allows you to become part of E-Commerce ’s project zero platform. Some sellers on E-Commerce will stop at nothing to ambush the actual product and replace it with their own poorly packaged, sometimes unsafe brand name product when a customer thinks they have ordered from your brand.
Will E-Commerce Brand Protection Improve My Products Sales?
E-Commerce brand protection allows you to create content which help with conversion and visual appeal to E-Commerce customers as well as protect consumers from a fake product listing or to remove counterfeiters from the marketplace without expensive legal costs.
The other way brand registry helps improve sales is through the advertising platform called “sponsored brands” and “sponsored display” giving additional ad opportunities to brand owners.
Report A Violation to E-Commerce
Once you have reported at least two violations of counterfeiters selling fake, patented, trademark infringed products on your listings, E-Commerce will allow you to sign up to its project zero system.
contact E-Commerce brand registry support and click on “report an intellectual property (IP) violation” on the “report a violation” tool and search for your product ASIN, then you can either select:
this option is useful if invalid content is being used on content or images and the product or packaging is pirated, or wholesale copying of the copyrighted product or packaging.
if you have a registered design right you can provide a trademark number.
you can report a potential violation of your patent or utility model.
the most common issue if sellers are hijacking your listing or creating a counterfeit product when using your brands trademark.
Once you have 2 of policy violations you will be able to get onto “project zero”.
It is important to note that you must be an administrator the brand registry program or a “registered agent” to be able to submit policy violations on E-Commerce.
E-Commerce s project Zero platform allows you to gate your brand from sellers, report and remove unauthorized sellers who sell fakes and allow you to vet trusted sellers of your brand, improving the customer experience and bringing reputation in both your brand and E-Commerce s platform.
You will need to provide additional information on how the products are infringing your brand. We recommend being very specific and clear, any inconsistency or lack of evidence will likely make the violation invalid.
E-Commerce brand gating and Product Detail Page Protection
Brand gating can only be achieved by being successful on the project zero program but it will mean, sellers will need to get a legitimate invoice and approval letter or letter of authorization to sell your products, this will give you a much better way to protect your brand.
E-Commerce have started to gate categories too, due to large numbers of fake products or risky products that may violate rules or health and safety issues.
- gated category
- submit required documents
Whats E-Commerce ’s transparency program?
E-Commerce Transparency The transparency program allows sellers who send items into E-Commerce warehouses a unique QR code that gets placed on every unit and allows E-Commerce fulfillment centers to know that the product they are bringing into their warehouse’s that the product is legitimate and stops any unauthorized seller from sending the item in, E-Commerce will reject any Listing that is not in the transparency program.
What else can I do to protect my brand on E-Commerce?
One of the key things we see regularly is holes in supply chains. our clients are providing wholesale products to their customers who in turn are allowing retailers to sell these items, this makes a much bigger market but also means product listings and you might find multiple offers for the same SKU, some retailers selling products without VAT, and occasionally some buying from multiple sources which may also mean lines are are not legitimate, meaning the brand owner has a much more difficult task on protecting their brand on E-Commerce.
The sheer amount of E-Commerce sellers who have now entered the marketplace in the last couple of years means that it becoming more and more difficult for brands to control the quality of what product a customer buys.
E-Commerce Brand Protection Strategy, what we do to protect your brand
We successfully help our clients navigate brand registry and project zero to make sure fakes and poor sellers keep off the platform, and our clients have a frictionless buying experience between them and their buyers. the process is not straight forward and even intellectual property (IP) lawyers and legal representatives struggle with the process, and many E-Commerce experts can help sellers with marketing and SEO but the brand protection system that aligns