Guides

Amazon private label FBA means selling a product under a brand you own, made for you by a manufacturer, stored and shipped by Fulfillment by Amazon. What makes it a different business from reselling is not the factory but the ownership chain: a brand name, a trademark behind it, product identifiers licensed to you, Brand Registry enrollment, and the listing those four together let you control. Each link is acquired separately, from a different authority, and a missing link weakens every one after it. ...

Amazon Sponsored Brands Budget: Daily vs Lifetime, the $1 Minimum, Pacing, and What You Cannot Change After Launch A Sponsored Brands budget is either a daily budget or a lifetime budget, and you pick one when you create the campaign. Amazon’s advertising FAQ states that the minimum daily budget for Sponsored Brands is $1.00 (or the local-currency equivalent), that you cannot switch between daily and lifetime after you have selected one, and that a live lifetime budget can only be increased, never decreased (data checked 2026-10-15). Everything else — how fast the money goes, and whether a single day can overshoot — depends on which official page you read, and the pages do not agree. ...

A design patent is the US protection for how your Amazon product looks: its shape, its surface ornamentation, or both. A utility patent is the separate protection for how the product works. A design patent is not automatic. You file an application with the USPTO, it carries exactly one claim and a set of drawings or photographs, and an examiner compares it with earlier designs before anything is granted. Sources: the USPTO’s Design Patent Application Guide, USPTO fee schedule, and MPEP 1505, Term of Design Patent, plus Amazon’s public Brand Registry page and Intellectual Property Policy (all data checked 2026-10-15). This guide explains the rules and the decision points. It does not judge whether any particular product design qualifies or infringes. ...

If the HTS code of your wooden, bamboo or other plant-based product appears on the APHIS Lacey Act Implementation Schedule, the importer of record or its agent must file a Lacey Act declaration at entry that names the plant’s scientific name, the country where it was harvested, the value, and the quantity in metric units. Since Phase VII began on December 1, 2024, APHIS has required declarations for all remaining plant product HTS codes that are not 100-percent composite materials, which pulls in furniture, cork, sporting goods and housewares that never needed one before. As of January 1, 2026, APHIS no longer accepts paper PPQ 505 forms: the filing goes through CBP’s ACE or APHIS’s LAWGS (APHIS pages read 2026-10-15). ...

A trademark clearance search before you name an Amazon brand has two parts. First, search the free USPTO trademark database for marks that look, sound, or mean something similar to your name on related goods, not just identical names in your own class. Second, search state trademark registries and the internet, including Amazon itself, because unregistered use can also block you. A federal search alone is not enough: the USPTO says its database “only contains federally registered and applied-for trademarks.” ...

Copyright registration for Amazon sellers starts from a point most sellers miss: your product photos, listing copy, A+ images, and instruction manuals are already protected by US copyright the moment they are created in fixed form, with no filing. What copyright never covers is your product name, brand name, title, or slogan; those belong to trademark law. Registration with the US Copyright Office is optional, but for US works it is the step you need before you can sue for infringement, and registering early unlocks extra remedies. ...

Under US law, whether a beauty product is a cosmetic or a drug depends on its intended use, and the first way FDA lists for establishing intended use is “Claims stated on the product labeling, in advertising, on the Internet, or in other promotional materials”—which covers your Amazon title, bullets, A+ content, and images (FDA, Is It a Cosmetic, a Drug, or Both? (Or Is It Soap?), content current as of 09/11/2024, data checked 2026-10-14). ...

Under FTC advertising rules, every claim on an Amazon listing has to pass three tests: it cannot mislead a reasonable shopper about something that matters to the purchase, you need objective evidence for it before it goes live, and any qualifier it depends on has to be clear and conspicuous. Customer reviews usually do not count as that evidence for health or safety claims, or for any other claim that requires objective evaluation, and a money-back guarantee does not either. A qualifier in fine print, or one that contradicts the headline claim, does not fix a claim that is false. ...

To trademark a brand name for Amazon, you file a federal application with the USPTO through its online Trademark Center, and it moves through four stages: application, examination, publication, and registration. You choose a filing basis: use in commerce, if you already sell under the brand across state lines and can show a specimen, or intent to use, if you have not launched. If your domicile is outside the United States, a US-licensed attorney must file for you. A pending application is already enough to enroll in Amazon Brand Registry. ...

Whether your product is an FDA medical device depends mainly on what you claim it does, not on what it is made of. FDA’s own determination page says to start by defining your product’s intended use and indications for use, then compare them against the device definition in section 201(h) of the FD&C Act and search for an existing classification (FDA, How to Determine if Your Product is a Medical Device, content current as of 09/29/2022, data checked 2026-10-14). ...

The CPSC lead limit for children’s products is 100 parts per million (ppm) of total lead content in every accessible part of a product designed or intended primarily for children 12 and younger. Paint and similar surface coatings on children’s products face a separate, tighter limit of 0.009 percent, or 90 ppm. Both apply to children’s products made in or imported into the United States, both require testing at a CPSC-accepted laboratory, and a Children’s Product Certificate (CPC) is required even when every part is inaccessible or made of a material CPSC has determined does not exceed the limit (CPSC, data checked 2026-10-13). ...

The CPSC phthalates rule, 16 CFR part 1307, prohibits making for sale, selling, distributing or importing any children’s toy or child care article that contains more than 0.1 percent (1,000 ppm) of any of eight phthalates: DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIBP, DPENP, DHEXP and DCHP. The limit applies to each accessible plasticized component part. Covered products need third-party testing at a CPSC-accepted lab unless the material is on a CPSC exempt list, and a Children’s Product Certificate citing “16 C.F.R. part 1307 – Phthalates” (CPSC and 16 CFR, data checked 2026-10-13). ...