📢 Important Guidelines: Submitting Letters of Authorization (LOA) for Trademark Usage
Hello Sellers!
We want to help you understand the requirements for submitting proper documentation when using trademarked content in your listings. Here's what you need to know:
What You Need & Why
If you're using another company's trademark in your listings (including product images, packaging, or detail pages), you'll need to provide either:
- Proof of trademark ownership OR
- A valid Letter of Authorization (LOA) from the trademark owner
Essential Components of a Valid LOA
Your documentation must include these 5 key terms:
1. Licensor (company granting the rights)
2. Licensee (company receiving the rights)
3. Grant (specific IP being licensed and scope)
4. Geographic scope (authorized territories)
5. Term (duration of authorization)
Acceptable Documentation Formats
✅ PDF documents
✅ Scanned PDF images
✅ Word documents (only for self-declarations by IP owners)
✅ Email screenshots (must be from trademark owner's company domain)
Required Elements
- Company letterhead of the trademark owner
- Complete agreement terms
- Authorized signature/stamp
- If emailed: Must come from trademark owner's official domain
Additional Note: If you don't have trademark registration in your selling region, include a declaration of IP ownership with your company stamp or authorized signature.
💡 Pro Tip: Review all documentation carefully before submission to ensure it meets these requirements. This will help avoid delays in the approval process.
Have questions? Drop them below! We're here to help.
28 replies
Seller_4mvpF14wacAyg
Hello @Julia_Amzn
This whole process is a complete joke if I'm totally honest.
Sellers have to jump through so many hoops to get authorisation to list a brand and usually within days you remove our access. With some brands seller support say you have 96 hours to list etc, but with most they just accept and don't give you any timescale, you'll just log in one day and not have access to the brand. I have literally been approved for a certain brand over 50 times in the course of 2 years, because you just remove my access every 2 weeks.
The main issue I have is that your AI tools that look after the catalogue just constantly break parent/child variants, so I need access to the brands to just fix things you break, not to list new products.
I don't understand why once we have provided a valid LOA and been accepted to sell the brand you just remove it within days. It just seems you are pushing everyone to be invited by the brand to be an authorised seller, but as other people have pointed out, most of our suppliers cannot provide this as they are not the brand owner, they are a manufacture with a certain product license.
It's stressful logging in and some of my top selling parent/child sku lines are just scattered into single size/colours and I have to go through the process of proving I'm a valid seller AGAIN and AGAIN with the EXACT same information I have provided for years from the same supplier, who have the exact same license agreement and LOA.
If you want proof of how ridiculous it is please look at the below case logs where I have been approved for the same brand over and over again, I have many more case logs if you want them...
11019753632 - 15th April
10999561872 - 14th April
10979020982 - 8th April
10958115932 - 1st April
10930433132 - 20th March
10915301692 - 17th March
The whole process is not fit for purpose at the moment, sorry for the rant, but it is my main concern as a seller.
Seller_KyAP1cutff5TF
I've provided this so many times for one brand. Ive been going back and forth with seller support for 5 days and im getting no where.
I have two ASINS using the same trademark owners brand on both ASINS. Seller support have reinstated one listing, but they wont reinstate the other. The listings are both the same brand, its so frustrating!
Seller_AJxxLujbGDqaW
The problem with this and always has been is that Amazon do not know which brands are which and who owns them. For example, you could have products with brand Spiderman, Avengers or Hulk and the brand owner is Marvel, however if the listing has been created with the brand Spiderman, Amazon WILL ONLY accept a LOA from Spiderman, they will not accept a Marvel authorisation and this is impossible to get.
The other important issue is that brands are owned by brand owners and they give permission to manufacturers and distributors by licence to make and distribute their products, so therein lies another issue, if you purchase a Disney product, say Frozen and the manufacturer has been given the manufacturing license and then the manufacturer gives the distribution license to a distributor, both the manufacturer and the distributor have the right to make and distribute and fully licensed by the brand owner who has authorised them.
Amazon however WILL ONLY accept a letter from the Disney Corporation and they are not in the habit of issuing LOA's to Amazon sellers when they have set up a full manufacturing and distribution network for their products.
The same issue arises if you want to change the brand of the item, so say Marvel and then list the item as Spiderman, this will also not be possible as the brand is now Marvel and the Marvel corporation will not issue LOA's to Amazon seller and Amazon will say that the item does not match the brand and block it.
So, if Amazon refuse to accept the legitimate LOA's from the license holders, then nothing will happen, no listing.
I have lost about 500 listings that were removed for brand issues and when I had an account Manager he took the 20 pages that I had written to the branding team and there was never any response as neither of us could figure out how to get the LOA when the brand owner licenses the manufacturer and distributor.
Until the branding team actually understand how branding and issuing of LOA's work, millions of listings will be lost and sellers will never be able to create listings for their branded items.
I have been dealing with this issue for more than 5 years and despite involving the manufactures and distributors that have the licenses nothing is ever done, the distributors just say that Amazon are too difficult to deal with and give up.
I even asked them to contact the brand owner, for example Marvel or Disney and ask them to let the manufacturer or distributor issue the LOA's and that didn't work as the LOA was not from the office of the brand owner and so we go round and round and nothing happens.
Having read this advice it would be virtually if not actually impossible to get all this information, so nobody will be able to sell a branded product in a lot of categories.
Unless you are specifically involved or friendly with an actual brand owner who is prepared to give you a LOA for their actual brand, then you will not succeed.
There are millions of products that could be listed by sellers on Amazon, but there is no route to successfully achieve this and that is a fact that I have proved.
Brand owners are losing millions that they could easily have if Amazon allowed their products to be listed, however it is quite easy to understand why a brand owner who may have 100 brands that are licensed out would not give one seller a LOA to sell the brand, but on the other hand they want their items sold on Amazon but have no route to actually achieve this due to the Amazon view of branding and how it works.
Anyone know anything different?
Seller_AJxxLujbGDqaW
Having read a few of the other replies that state exactly the same thing, perhaps it is time for Amazon to stop listening to the people who think they know and get an independent person in to analyse the LOA system and maybe it will increase Amazon's turnover by a few hundred million if they actually allow sellers to sell approved branded products and not ask for what is impossible.
I am passionate about this issue as I know for a fact that Amazon is wrong.
Seller_zOYeT4NVTdUGV
@Julia_Amzn
This is all well and good but, we sell chocolates in personalised bouquet boxes. Our business is the creation of personalised gifts and customers choose what chocolates to add in their personalised box.
Under UK LAW, we do NOT require to be an authorised seller of any brand of chocolate. Brands make their products available to purchase through a network of wholesalers. We must register and prove we are a business with the wholesaler but once done, we do NOT need any further or specific authorisation from the brand owners themselves as by 'implication' they have granted permission for re-sale by any business registered with their authorised wholesalers. It is how they sell, they do not have individual stores themselves, they rely upon re-sellers!
What Amazon is doing here is 'assuming' we need to be authorised when we do not, when we therefor can not show we are authorised (as it does not exist and is not required by the brands in question) listings are deleted. Does every shop on all the UK High Streets have an authorisation for each brand of chocolate they sell? I think not! Is it required? I KNOW it is NOT!
We have gone through the last 12 months being told we must have titles such as "Personalised Chocolate Bouquet COMPATIBLE with Snickers" for example (like you plug a Snickers bar in somewhere !) and after all that across hundreds of listings, we now get told images are now also affected and it all starts again. Can Amazon please tell me how I show a customer clear images of what they are buying (as required in UK LAW and Amazon image policies) yet I can not show the Snickers bar ?!? The solution seems to be they remove the listing so you can't !
I believe government regulators will have a field day with this policy down the line, it arbitrarily leaves Amazon to decide a product is 'suspected' of Trade Mark infringement and remove listings (prosecution without trial!) when the actual Brand owners are not making any such accusations even though they have the ability to flag listings themselves if they are concerned.
I totally get a case for example of somebody selling a cheap watch and claiming it is a Rolex but stopping genuine sellers, selling genuine legitimate brands, that do not require any special authorisation to so is unconstitutional in a free economy.
Traders/Sellers are being assumed guilty of Trade Mark infringement without due cause and expected to produce a LOA that is not required and so does not exists. Can you imagine, in our case for example, is Mars Wrigley really going to write a LOA for every seller for every sub brand they sell (Snickers, Mars, Galaxy etc) across the entire UK? They simply do not have the man power to do this. I do have a theory why this is happening, ever heard of Amazon Fresh? Would the implementation of this policy be more or less beneficial to Amazon Fresh for example? Morisons on Amazon? Co-Op on Amazon?
We all love Amazon, that's why we are on here. If Amazon is a friend then, as a good friend, I would 'gently advise' Amazon, this may end up with you in a heap of trouble and be very costly in the long run, Brand owners need us, your 'arbitrary' policy is getting in the way of that, they may not in the long run be happy and thank you for it.
(Disclaimer : All Trademarks brand names and/or product names used are purely for descriptive purposes only, other brands are available!)
Julia_Amzn
Hello Sellers,
Thank you for a very interesting and valuable discussion on the Letter of Authorization requirement process. I will review all your comments and summarize your feedback, which will be forwarded to the internal team.
Please keep adding your thoughts on how we could improve this process to make it more transparent for sellers while protecting your listings from intellectual property infringements.
Best regards, Julia.
Seller_zOYeT4NVTdUGV
Hi @Julia_Amzn
Personally, i think that Amazon already has a process to allow Brand owners to complain if they feel their trademarks are being abused and if a system isn't broke, don't try to fix it.
However, if you want to maintain integrity of the Amazon catalogue, keep sellers wanting to engage on the Amazon platform, keep enough variety to keep customers wanting to come back to Amazon to buy and essentially tighten up the system with as little disruption as possible might I offer one of the following simple solutions.
A) Adopt a policy of assuming any Brand authorises their brands to be sold on Amazon unless they object in writing within, say 1 month, 3 Months, 6 months or a suitable period Amazon is comfortable with. If brands are happy to sell to authorised distributors, they know full well their products can be bought by business' to re-sell and hence, if genuine products there is no IP breach. If they are not happy, they can OPT OUT.
B) Amazon as a platform applies to the Brand owners for blanket LOA's. Amazon can then be assured the brands are happy for the brands to be sold on Amazon and the onus is on the individual sellers to ensure they are purchasing from authorised agents and selling genuine products. perhaps then individual sellers can register with Amazon for a sub-LOA to sell the brands in question. This is tidy, keeps everything in house and does not cause mass confusion and headaches to the main Brand owners receiving MILLIONS of individual LOA requests.
Option B however, lets make it clear, should be a FREE process and under no circumstances should sellers have to pay Amazon a sub-fee to sell a particular brand as Amazon is not the Brans owner. The idea is simply to exonerate Amazon of any possible IP infringement from Brand owners. Amazon has the manpower and financial abilities to arrange this what should be quite straightforward approach.
Hope that helps !
Seller_iYCrwoyqEYtxD
I agree with other contributors - Amazon's whole catalogue system is broken with respect to brands.
I have 3 product families from a brand - the brand is licensed to a local company who manufacture the footwear under license. The company then gave us authority to list the brand and provided us with a copy of the licence between them and the brand, the GS1 certificate to show the EANs are licensed to them, and a letter of authority giving us permission to list on Amazon. These were all accepted by Amazon (eventually - jumping through many hoops and submitting multiple cases) and I created the size/colour product families. You'd think that would be the end of it, but no.
Every week/fortnight the family relationship breaks - from previous forum posts I understand this is the new bots that do this. I then try to recreate the family, and get an 8040 error. I have to submit a case to the Brands team who ALWAYS misunderstand the issue - the products already exist but the family relationship needs fixing. This weekend's response took from Seller Support took the biscuit though (caseID 11029463442)
"We understand that you have contacted us regarding the error 8040 for multiple batch id's. We have completed our review and determined that the variation relationship is not approved because it does not follow Amazon's listing policy. Hence, the seller is denied for brand [deleted]. Due to confidentiality, we cannot disclose the factors behind the decision. Please refrain asking for these."
So - you may have bought legitimate licensed products, Amazon may have allowed you to list them, but they can randomly and without question, remove the family relationship with no possible recourse for the seller.
Unbelievable
Seller_AJxxLujbGDqaW
Thanks for the response, I am quite sure that if senior Management in Amazon who are responsible for revenue and margin read this thread then they would take action, if they did not, then they are not interested in increasing the Amazon turnover and creating profit through third party seller fees.
Unfortunately one of the main issues in Amazon preventing anything from ever being done is that there are too many layers of teams upon teams and issues such as this go to a team and it is then escalated to another team and that is where it stops, it never actually reaches a level where meaningful action could be taken.
The teams such as branding, catalogue, performance, seller support, buying and others in my opinion and based on some experience seem to all operate within their own environments and responsibilities, but are unable to take any real positive change decisions, so of course nothing ever changes.
I just wonder if someone actually presented this to a senior Manager and said that a change to the branding authorisation system based on the information in this thread could lead to a $200 million increase in revenue by third party sellers and an increase of $25 million in increased seller fees, would this be of interest?
It is very clear that brand owners want their products sold on Amazon, they have their own intellectual property companies that safeguard their brands online and the only thing that is stopping this is Amazon, due to the system regarding LOA's and how they work.
If I am wrong with this, please let someone tell me why I am wrong and why Amazon are unable to accept the information in this thread and begin to accept LOA's from the people who are making and distributing the products for the brand owners under licence.
As a final point that I would like to make, if sellers were allowed to create listings for branded products without LOA's from the brand owner, providing that the seller provided the invoices, the barcodes and the images of the products, that should be enough and if there was an issue with a product it would be the intellectual property guardians of the brand that would take action against the seller, it really is not as complicated as Amazon is making it IMO.
Seller_k0U09yfkItdTa
Hi Julie
I need to add my frustrations with this policy. We are the brand holder, we are registered and trade as "Crompton Controls" and our products are branded as such. Our "Series 3000" range is included. We have registered the brand and logo with yourselves, no problem. You have certificates, web site information and details from Companies House
We have been told that we are in trademark violation of the brand "Crompton" I've spoken direct to your associates and explained that "Crompton" is the surname of an old engineer and is now associated with several brands - all with their own trademark and license.
Crompton Lamps - lighting company
Crompton Greaves - Manufacturer of motors
Crompton Instruments - Current measuring equipment
Brook Crompton - Motor manufacturer
The team keep coming back with the same reply, share LOA. How can we get one of these when we are the brand owner???
Seller_AJxxLujbGDqaW
Hi Julia, could we please request a structured response from Amazon regarding the issues raised as people have taken a lot of time to explain an issue that Amazon clearly do not understand?
Seller_zOYeT4NVTdUGV
@Julia_Amzn
Julia, is there any update on this issue. Many genuine sellers, selling genuine products from wholesalers and suppliers, themselves authorised by the Brand owners themselves, are having their online business listings wrongfully removed, health metrics affected and in some cases their online business's decimated by these unilateral actions by Amazon.
You reached out asking the community for their input, they gave you the input you requested but as yet there does not appear to be any response from Amazon.
You said I will review all your comments and summarize your feedback, which will be forwarded to the internal team." Have they responded yet?
Thanks in advance.
Julia_Amzn
Hello @Seller_zOYeT4NVTdUGV, I am currently working on the best way to connect sellers with our partner team, who can provide more details about this process. Thank you for your patience.
Seller_RguKGMHvWFmo3
Amazon over relies on AI
True across many processes.
Bring back humans with some business acumen and common sense.
Seller_AJxxLujbGDqaW
I found this on a previous post and I think it just shows no matter how precise and accurate a seller is to try and educate Amazon, they are not interested and nobody knows anything except Amazon and in this case they are clearly wrong:
Copied from a previous thread:
It’s become increasingly clear that Amazon staff often misunderstand the concept of Letters of Authorization (LOA) and who should issue them. Let’s break it down clearly for everyone.
The Basics of Licensing
When a popular brand — let’s use **Disney** as an example — owns an intellectual property (IP), they can grant other companies the license to create products using their characters and designs. For instance, **Disney** may license **Funko** to create collectible figures featuring beloved characters like **Woody from Toy Story**.
In this scenario:
- **Disney** owns the IP.
- **Funko** has the license to create and distribute products featuring Disney’s IP.
Who Controls Distribution?
Here’s where the confusion happens:
- In the agreement between **Disney** and **Funko**, **Funko** has the right to control **who sells their products**, not **Disney**.
- This means if a seller wants to list **Funko’s Disney-branded products** on Amazon, the **Letter of Authorization** should come from **Funko** — the brand manufacturing and distributing the product — not **Disney**.
**Disney** would only issue an LOA if they were directly manufacturing and distributing the products themselves, which they are not in this case.
Why This Matters
When Amazon instructs sellers to get an LOA from **Disney** instead of **Funko**, it leads to unnecessary delays and frustration. **Disney** has no obligation or authority to approve resellers of **Funko’s** licensed products. It’s **Funko’s** right to determine who can distribute their products, per their licensing agreement.
The Ask: Educate Amazon Staff Properly
To avoid further confusion, Amazon must ensure their staff understands these key points:
1. **The brand that manufactures and distributes the product is responsible for issuing the LOA — not the original IP owner.**
2. **If a company like Funko holds the license, they decide who can sell their products, not Disney.**
3. **Sellers should only be asked for LOAs from the brand producing and distributing the item, not the IP owner unless they are one and the same.**
By understanding this licensing structure, Amazon can prevent unnecessary roadblocks and create a smoother process for legitimate sellers.
Let’s get this right — sellers and brands deserve clarity and accuracy when it comes to LOAs!
