You found a knockoff of your board game on a marketplace. Same box art, same components, a fraction of the price.
You go to report it, and the form asks for a trademark registration certificate you don’t have.
At that point, a registration is often the better part of a year away. The USPTO averaged about 10 months from filing to a final decision in the first half of fiscal year 2026.
Marketplaces aren’t courts. Each one runs its own complaint system and decides who gets to use it.
For most of them, the first gate is your trademark status. They don’t all draw that line in the same place, and knowing where each one draws it decides how fast you can get a counterfeit pulled.
Amazon: a pending application usually gets you into Brand Registry
Amazon Brand Registry is where Amazon’s best enforcement tools live, including the Report a Violation tool.
To enroll, you need a pending or registered trademark from a designated government trademark office in a country where Amazon has a store. Amazon’s eligibility page also asks for a logo that includes your brand name, permanently affixed to your products or packaging.
How “pending” works is murkier than it should be. Amazon’s public page says pending marks qualify only “in some cases,” and the office-by-office list sits behind a login.
In mid-2025, an Amazon employee wrote in the seller forums that a pending US application filed directly with the USPTO isn’t eligible. According to that post, you’d need to file through IP Accelerator, Amazon’s network of vetted trademark firms.
That hasn’t matched what I see. My clients regularly enroll with pending US applications filed directly with the USPTO.
Amazon can change its rules without notice, though. If Brand Registry is the main reason you’re filing, check the current requirements in your account when you enroll.
The details that trip people up
- The mark has to be a word mark, or a logo that contains words, letters, or numbers. A pure design mark, like the Nike swoosh, won’t work.
- The text in your trademark has to match the brand name on your product and packaging.
- Amazon’s strongest tools require a registration. Project Zero, which lets you remove counterfeit listings yourself, needs a registered trademark plus a track record of accurate reports. Transparency, which puts a unique code on every unit you ship, also needs a registered trademark.
For the full enrollment walkthrough, see my Amazon Brand Registry guide.
How to report infringement on Amazon without Brand Registry
Not enrolled at all? Amazon’s public Report Infringement form still takes complaints from rights owners.
Amazon confirms that rights owners without a brand in Brand Registry can use it. Brand Registry is faster and gives you better tools, but it isn’t the only door.
AliExpress: registration or nothing
AliExpress complaints now go through Alibaba International’s IP Protection Platform, which also covers Alibaba.com, Lazada, and Miravia.
Its rule for trademarks is blunt: a pending application is not valid proof. It accepts registration certificates only.
You’ll also need ID, or business registration documents for a company. Anyone filing on your behalf needs a signed letter of authorization.
The platform also notes that IP rights are territorial. In practice, your registration has to be valid in the jurisdiction that matters for the listing, which means the knockoff has to be sold into a country where your trademark is registered.
Walmart Brand Portal and TikTok Shop are just as strict
Walmart’s brand registry program is called the Walmart Brand Portal. It takes an active USPTO registration only, and pending applications don’t qualify.
TikTok Shop’s US IP Protection Center asks for the official USPTO registration certificate.
Your art works without a registration
Copyright works differently. You don’t need a registration to send a takedown notice for copied art.
In the US, a valid notice under the DMCA needs things like your contact details and a good-faith statement. The elements Congress set out don’t include a registration certificate.
AliExpress is the exception to watch. Alibaba’s published rules say it accepts complaints about unregistered works backed by a written claim statement.
In my experience, though, AliExpress has asked for a copyright registration number anyway. If AliExpress is where your knockoffs show up, register the art before you need it.
Counterfeit board games tend to copy your actual art, because reprinting your files is cheaper than making new ones. Your box art, card art, illustrations, and rulebook text are protected by copyright from the moment you create them.
So if your trademark is still pending and a knockoff shows up, the art may be your fastest route to a takedown.
There are limits. Copyright only reaches what they copied, so if a knockoff keeps your name and redraws the art, that’s the trademark’s job.
And platforms outside the US, where the DMCA doesn’t apply, may simply ignore your takedown requests.
Stop counterfeits at the border with CBP recordation
For physical games, there’s one more tool most publishers never use.
Once your trademark registers on the Principal Register, you can record it with US Customs and Border Protection. Customs can then stop counterfeit copies at the border, before they reach a warehouse.
Registered copyrights can be recorded too. Pending applications can’t.
Who this hits hardest
Board game publishers feel this most, because physical knockoffs are what these marketplaces sell.
Video game studios run into it with merch. The plushies, shirts, and figures that show up once a game gets popular get ripped off quickly too.
Either way, the takeaway is the same: file the application before you need it, not after the first knockoff appears.
That’s partly about the platforms and partly about the law. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1057(c), once your mark registers, your filing date becomes your nationwide priority date for the goods in your registration.
What you should do
- File before you launch. A successful crowdfunding campaign or a big trailer puts your game in front of everyone, including the people making knockoffs.
- Start with the word mark. Filing the name in plain text matches what Amazon checks, and it protects the name itself, whatever font or logo you put it in.
- Register the copyright in your key art. You can usually send a takedown without one, but AliExpress may ask for it, and you need a registration to sue in the US and to record with Customs.
- Get it in writing from your artists. If a freelancer drew your box art, you need a signed assignment to own it. Without one, you may not be the person entitled to send the takedown.
- Keep your paperwork in one folder. That means registration certificates, artist assignments, your ID or business documents, and photos of the product and packaging showing the brand. Every platform asks for some version of this.
- Put a power of attorney in place with your lawyer. That way they can file complaints for you quickly, without another round of back and forth when a knockoff appears.