Trademark for E-commerce sellers

A trademark can be a logo, symbol, design or mark which is used by any firm or organization to represent its identity. It helps your customer to find you easily in a competitive market and distinguish between your product and services from others. Not only that, Trademark is a necessary component of your business that builds the reputation, market value, represents authenticity etc. towards customers.

Who needs Trademark:

If you have an established online store or planning to set up one on E-commerce giant like Amazon—it’s time for you to think one.

Trademark Registration

Intellectual Property India is responsible for the trademark registration of any kind of business. The process takes about 15 to 24 months for the complete registration. Even though you may find the process to be time taking at first, but in the end, it will help you a lot to build your brand.

Documents Required for Trademark:

Name of the Applicant and address.
Name of Company, GST, and address if the applicant is a company.
Your Trademark logo/Name with a tagline.
The category of the trademark for which you want to apply.

Note: You can choose any combination of word, letter, phrase, design etc which is different from the existing logo.

Process:

Once all the documents are ready, you can apply for the trademark. Before paying government fees, you should check if your trademark name already exists. If no, you can proceed to pay the government fees. You will get acknowledgment mail stating that your trademark is in application state.

Using this Acknowledgement form, you can apply for brand approval in all marketplaces and start listing.

Benefits of Trademark:

Having your trademark will help your online business in several ways:

To protect your business:

For each product or services you deal with in your business—there is already big market & competition out there. Especially when you’re selling online or on any E-commerce store. You can find out many businesses who are selling the same products as you with your brand name. Not only that, they might sell few products which are damaged or fake and this ruins your business reputation so is the customer experience.

The only solution to this problem is to have your own Trademark so that in future if something happens you can take the necessary action.

A trademark helps your customer to find you:

The e-commerce industry is growing at a super fast speed. Thousands of people are making their entrance to start their own online business specifically on sites like Amazon, Flipkart etc. But customers are finding it difficult to find out their favorite brand in this sea of an online competitive market. Trademark plays an important role to create brand awareness, brand image and a positive reputation in the mind of customers. It makes them easy to find out in the crowd.

Prevent your Account from Suspension:

When you list generic products in other brands, your account is at risk of suspension as per marketplace policy. To keep your account and payment safe, it is advisable to register a new trademark.

Seeking Investors:

Whether you’re an e-commerce merchant or planning for an online selling store. You will need a big investment. And for e-commerce merchant—having a Trademark will help you a lot in getting the attention from the investors. Because the investors also want to put their money where they find reliability and value.

Taking a common risk in business is not a big deal but taking the risk of your brand reputation, customer engagement can cause much harm to the newly set up business.

Do you need a trademark for your business?

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