An agency should manage enrollment, IP complaints, listing appeals, and the tools Registry unlocks, all inside your account. It should never be the registered brand owner and never hold the trademark. The dividing line is simple: they operate Registry, you own it.
The short version
- They operate, you own. Trademark and brand owner role stay in your entity.
- In scope: enrollment support, IP complaints, appeals, A+ content, Brand Store, Vine.
- Out of scope: owning the trademark, being the registered brand owner.
- Ask who files the trademark and in whose name. The answer must be yours.
- Registry unlocks tools. Expect them used, not just enabled.
What an agency should do with Registry
I run Flapen with 50 operators managing about 70 brands, and Brand Registry and IP protection are handled in-house alongside trademark and GTIN registration.
| Task | Agency should | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Trademark filing | Coordinate, in your name | Never in theirs |
| Registry enrollment | Do it, under your account | You approve, you own |
| Brand owner role | Not hold it | This is the critical line |
| IP complaints against infringers | File and track | Ongoing, not one-time |
| Listing hijack removal | Monitor and act | Should be proactive |
| A+ content and Brand Store | Build and maintain | In your account |
| Vine enrollment | Manage | Early review velocity |
| Transparency and Project Zero | Advise on fit | Not right for every brand |
The line that matters
Everything in that table is delegable except the ownership row.
Registry enrollment depends on a registered or pending trademark, and whoever holds the trademark controls the route back into Registry if anything goes wrong. File in your own company name. If an agency offers to handle the filing, confirm whose name goes on the application, not just who prepares it.
This is not a trust question. It is a structure question, and the right structure means trust never has to be tested.
What proactive support looks like
Enrollment is a one-time task. The ongoing value is monitoring, and this is where agencies quietly differ.
You want someone watching for unauthorised sellers on your listings, counterfeit listings using your images, listing hijacks where a third party edits your content, and suppressed listings from policy flags. All of these are recoverable quickly and expensive slowly.
Ask what the monitoring cadence is and what happened the last time they caught something. A vague answer means Registry was enrolled and then forgotten.
What registry actually unlocks
Worth knowing so you can tell whether an agency is using it.
A+ content and Brand Store, which affect conversion directly. Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ad formats. Vine, for early review velocity on a new product. Enhanced reporting including search term data at brand level. And the IP tools that make complaints enforceable.
An agency that enrolled you and did not build A+ content or a Brand Store has left conversion on the table. If your conversion rate is low, no amount of ad spend fixes it, and these are among the cheapest conversion levers available.
Questions to ask about registry
- Whose name is on the trademark application?
- Who is listed as the brand owner in Registry?
- How often do you check for hijacks and unauthorised sellers?
- What did you last file a complaint about?
- Which Registry-only tools are we currently using?
Question five catches the most common gap. Registry is often treated as a checkbox during onboarding rather than a toolkit, and A+ content, Brand Store, and Vine get skipped because they are production work rather than account work.
What most agencies will not tell you
Registry enrollment is frequently sold as a headline onboarding deliverable and is a few hours of work once the trademark exists. The valuable part is the year of monitoring afterwards, and it is invisible when it is being done well.
That asymmetry produces a predictable pattern: enthusiastic enrollment, then silence. Ask for hijack and infringement monitoring to appear in the weekly report, even when the answer is nothing found. A line saying nothing found is proof someone looked.
The other thing worth naming: an agency that sets up Registry for a brand-new seller is doing something useful at a moment when the seller cannot evaluate the structure. That is exactly when the brand owner role ends up in the wrong place. Nobody plans it, and it is the hardest thing on this page to unwind afterwards.
Related answers
- How to handle Brand Registry and catalog during switch
- How to avoid Amazon suspension when starting out
- Questions for agencies about A+ content and brand store design
- Data ownership in Amazon service agreements
- Hiring an Amazon agency: the complete guide
The trademark goes in your name. That is not negotiable at Flapen.
