Amazon has announced that its IP Accelerator solution is now available to European retailers, just in time for their Black Friday sales.
The IP Accelerator, which is now live in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK, supports businesses in the fight against counterfeit goods by helping them to acquire trademarks on their intellectual property and connecting them with the relevant legal firms.
The IP Accelerator is free to join, while any legal aid is provided at “competitive rates.” The initiative is targeted at SMBs, which are responsible for a significant proportion of Amazon sales but often lack the resources required to tackle IP infringements. The IP Accelerator gives them more direct control over their brand.
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Brand protection
“We know from our conversations with small business owners that there is often confusion about why IP rights are important and how sellers can secure them,” Francois Saugier, Vice President for EU Seller Services at Amazon, said. “As part of our broader commitment to supporting small businesses, we have set up IP Accelerator to make the IP registration process as easy and as affordable as possible for entrepreneurs in the early days of their businesses.”
The European launch of IP Accelerator comes just over a year since it began in the US. In that time, it has resulted in 6,000 trademark application being filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office by participating SMBs. The expansion will cover Amazon’s six biggest European markets and will cover more than 150,000 extra SMBs.
One of the other major benefits of IP Accelerator is that it gives companies quick access to Amazon’s Brand Registry, which gives firms the ability to manage their brand via automated algorithms. Instead of manually scrolling through thousands of products to find a copycat brand, the registry rapidly finds and reports fake items.
With the holiday shopping season upon us, Amazon knows that it has a mammoth task on its hands to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods. Earlier this month, the e-commerce giant announced a new partnership with the US Government to help in the fight against fake goods.
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Via TechCrunch
