Someone has registered my brand
Hi,
As the title suggests someone has taken my brand and registered the name, schoolboy error on my part I know but it wasn’t really generating a lot of sales until the last few years and by then it had totally slipped my mind. Unfortunately a lot of my listings have the name in the description so a lot of my items have been supressed and I am trying to contact Amazon regarding this issue but all i get are generic email responses and the one time I managed to get to talk to someone they failed to understand the issue and I asked to speak to a supervisor but I haven’t been contacted yet.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
22 replies
Seller_qZO3ZCjoBXEeL
You’ll have to challenge the trademark registration.
If the mark has already been granted (published) and not still pending challenges this could be expensive.
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
I’m not sure what Amazon can do. I would think you need to be taking action through the UKIPO, though legal advice should really be sought first to see if invalidation is an option.
Seller_f5cnodyVjLD4S
Great advice from the guys and an important and timely reminder of how important it is to register your trademark and protect your brand especially when you will have spent a lot of money, time and effort building it up and advertising it.
Fingers crossed Body_Plus_Euro_Ltd1 
Seller_mY433bECtUizx
Thanks for the well wishes and as a poster has said earlier let this be a lesson to you all. I always meant to register it but for the sake of a bit of time and £200 kept putting it off thinking who would be interested in my brand anyway. I am fairly confident of sorting this issue and will keep you posted on cost and what steps I have had to take just in case I can help anyone in the future.
So far I have instructed a solicitor who specialises in intellectual property and as it is a teaching law advice centre they have agreed to start proceedings pro bono. Currently they are looking at as to what are the best steps to initiate proceedings with one course of action revocation or another option is to show the imposter is passing off my goods as their own. (as they are manufactured by me)
Seller_saK5Ah2SaNYjL
I challenged a trademark about 3 years ago. We had been selling mugs with a particular word on them since 2013 when someone trademarked that word in 2018. They then got all our listings booted. The word was first recorded in the urban dictionary in 1974.
We could prove that we had been selling the products for 5 years before the other seller registered the trademark. UK IPO would not back down and I lost the case. UK IPO are not very good at admitting when they have made a mistake. It cost me over £3000 and a lot of stress.
This particular seller was had trademarked a word in common use for 20 years before he was even born. He wasn’t using it as a brand, he was using it to claim copyright infringement on a word.
Seller_saK5Ah2SaNYjL
I look at the register once a month now. I didn’t know there was a register back then.
