“‘Fre’ is cut from ‘Freely,’” the person said, referring to a wish that customers will “buy our products from our store freely.” (One could imagine a similar story behind Pvendor.) Asked what sort of store it was, and how he or she chooses what to sell, the person gave an answer that was similarly Amazon-focused: “We sell the products that are popular on Amazon.”

The store is what matters, not the products, not the brand. The thing to be named, cultivated and protected by trademark isn’t a product or a line of products, but rather this thin, valuable conduit to American consumers, particularly to the more than 100 million American subscribers to Amazon Prime.

That a string of incremental changes to Amazon’s seller platform may have manifested as a mysterious crisis at the sleepy United States Patent and Trademark Office, via Shenzhen, sounds, well, not exactly cyberpunk, but at least a little bit sci-fi. These same changes have gradually altered what it means to be an Amazon seller — the rise of cross-border e-commerce, and an influx of new sellers who see Amazon not as a place to test a brand, or to start an external business, or as a tool to get started, but rather as a simple distribution channel to be exploited to its maximum potential, is something that Amazon sellers in America see as a challenge, or even as a crisis.

Amazon’s peculiar relationship with trademarks is slowly but surely altering the greater brand atmosphere. I ordered my FRETREE gloves for this story, but I’ll wear them — they’re fine. There’s already an MZOO sleep mask in our bedroom, and SPEXCEL cycling gear in my closet. There are MARSHEEPY sneaker deodorizers in my old shoes and an AZMKIMI replacement remote for a Sony TV, which I’d recommend by name if anyone asked. A Suptempo gel seat cushion ended up in my grandparents’ home based on a word-of-mouth recommendation. The recreational path that I take to work is a parade of athletic apparel — for years now, the flow of logos from Nike and Under Armour and Rapha and Lululemon has been speckled by runners in head-to-toe Baleaf and cyclists with loud jerseys branded SPONEED.

These brands are certainly reaching customers, who are spending untold millions of dollars to buy products with names that are more trademark than brand, and more Amazon than both. At 4-Star, Amazon’s brick-and-mortar store in Manhattan, however, they’re absent. A display touting the “latest innovations from emerging brands” offered SmartyPants vitamins, Animoodles magnetic stuffed animals, Tile Bluetooth trackers and a LectroFan white noise machine. Some displays were dedicated entirely to well-known brands, such as Kingston, which makes electronics accessories.

Others, under signs like “Customer Favorites,” seemed to be playing reputational experiments, placing Le Creuset cookware next to kitchen goods from AmazonBasics — the ubiquitous house brand that can, with a few successful items, wreck an Amazon product category for pseudo-brands and venerable brands alike. On two small displays with hats and gloves were tidy collections of gloves, said to be popular with Amazon customers. No VBIGERs or Rivmounts or Pvendors here. Just some Isotoners, and a few options from Carhartt. The only FRETREEs in the store were the ones on my hands.