A small brand finds a counterfeit on Amazon and assumes it is locked out, because it never enrolled in Brand Registry. That assumption costs more sales than the counterfeit does. Brand Registry is the fast door into Amazon's reporting system. It is not the only door, and for a brand with no registered trademark yet, it is not even the best door.
Door one is Report a Violation, inside Brand Registry. If your brand is enrolled, you search Amazon's catalog from inside the tool, select the offending listings, pick the claim type, and submit. Structured forms walk you through the reporting process, and a Submission History tab tracks every report's status in real time. Enrollment takes an active registered trademark or a pending application, the mark must be a word mark or an image mark that contains words, and your brand must be permanently on the product or its packaging. You do not need to sell on Amazon to enroll for the protection benefits.
Door two is the public Report Infringement form, open to any rights owner or their agent. You need an Amazon account to sign in, and a free buyer account counts. A selling account does not enter into it. Amazon warns that reports from people who are not the rights owner or their agent will not be processed. Owning the rights is the standing. Nothing else substitutes for it.
The counterfeit claim has a hard requirement: a federally registered trademark. Amazon requires a registration enforceable in the store you are reporting in, so USPTO for amazon.com. Common-law rights and pending applications cannot be used as the basis for a counterfeit claim. A pending application can be enough to enroll in Brand Registry, but not to file. That distinction catches brands that enrolled early and assumed the filing would follow.
A DTC brand a few years in often has no registration, a pending application at best, and a counterfeiter today. The counterfeit claim is closed to that brand until the registration issues. That is the wall, and it is the reason most small brands think they cannot report at all.
The copyright door is open today. A copyright claim covers what the counterfeiter took rather than what they sell: your product photos, your listing text, your packaging art. No registration is required. Amazon accepts a link to the work or a written description of it. One caveat from Amazon's own terms: an image you add to an Amazon detail page yourself is licensed to Amazon, so use the original work, not the version already on the detail page.
That lane is usually the faster one for a small brand, because it does not wait on a trademark registration. The counterfeiter who copied your listing almost certainly copied your photos too, and the photos are the evidence. File the copyright claim on the photos, get the listing down, and file the trademark claim when the registration issues.
Start with what you can prove today. If you have a registered trademark, file the counterfeit claim through the right door, Report a Violation if you are in Brand Registry, the public form if you are not. If you do not, file the copyright claim on the stolen photos and text. Both doors use the same form, and Amazon holds you to one claim type per notice, so pick the claim that fits the evidence you actually have.
Do not file a claim for a genuine, unaltered product sold by a seller you never authorized. That is not infringement, and Amazon's rights-owner help warns that repeated inaccurate notices can cost you the ability to submit them. The report that gets the listing down is the one with the right claim, the right evidence, and the right door. The report that gets ignored is the one filed in anger with the wrong claim.
If this topic is useful, these earlier guides go deeper on connected questions: our guide on test buys that hold up, our guide on turning a purchase into takedown evidence, and our guide on evidence packs that get listings removed fast.
Yes. Any rights owner can use Amazon's public Report Infringement form. You need an Amazon account to sign in, and a free buyer account counts. Brand Registry users get the Report a Violation tool, which is faster and more direct, but the public form is open to everyone.
A federally registered trademark, enforceable in the store you are reporting in, so USPTO for amazon.com. Amazon does not accept common-law rights or a pending application as the basis for a counterfeit claim. A pending application can be enough to enroll in Brand Registry, but not to file.
Yes, and it is usually the faster lane for a small brand. A copyright claim on your stolen product photos, listing text, or packaging art requires no registration at all. Amazon accepts a link to the work or a written description of it.
Being an unauthorized reseller is not infringement. If the product is genuine and unaltered, a trademark or counterfeit report is the wrong claim. Amazon also does not enforce exclusive or selective distribution agreements, and it does not enforce ownership of barcodes or UPCs. Repeated inaccurate notices can cost you the ability to submit them.