Seller using my Photographs
Can anyone help with advice please? We have in the past had numerous problems with, primarily, Chinese sellers linking to our listing for cushion covers we handmake and market under our name each is created on a unique listing, we are trademarked and each of the designs are copyright registered. We now have a new problem! Approx. 300 of our photos have been taken and used by a seller who has created their own listing using my photos and obviously the copyright designs.
I have reached out to Brand Registry which we are a member of, but have been invited to fill in a violation report - I can only include 50 items max on there and if I have to collate all this information and also supply the corresponding ASIN numbers for all items, together with the copyright registration certificates for each one - it will take me until the next millennium I fear! Any advice - because I have a horrible feeling that Amazon are going to insist I do this.
36 replies
Seller_0SqKVct98D3Y0
I should have mentioned - they are selling them on their own name i.e. no mention of Cushions Corner
Seller_SHpe5c4eREBFN
Sadly, copyright protection is only as good as the depth of your pockets and willingness to take legal action. It gets discussed here regularly. Brand Registry might be better but I have no experience of it but others have do not always seem to have found it straightforward to protect themselves whic is the whole point I would have thought.
Of course when we are accused of the same breaches by other dodgy sellers then we find our accounts suspended. It’s a no win!
Good Luck.
Seller_94VWxluF6zYyI
We had a similar problem several years ago.
We manufacture our own items. We make them here from scratch from our own designs (not buy in Chinese goods and rebrand them). We employed a photographer and model to take a series of pictures to use on our site and on our listings on eBay, Amazon and Etsy…
Of course… it didn’t take long for a Chinese company to piggyback our listing. We had to buy one of their items to get prove it was nothing like the items we were selling… So what did the cheeky monkeys do? They stole our images and set up their own listing…
Amazon refused to do anything about it…
Seller_y85eShwkJ1SUS
I’ve always reported using this form and they’ve always been removed:
Seller_6sxtIS0RbZ5k7
Could you buy one and then report it as inauthentic or not as described?
Seller_w1Y7gBnHkykbc
I’m going to make an assumption here, the assumption is that you have purchased licensing rights to the Disney, Beatles, Ronaldo, Warner Bros., Suicide Squad etc. intellectual property that you are using on your products, that being the case it is highly unlikely that the Chinese seller has also secured the licencing rights which will make getting them removed quite easy.
You can either report them to your licencing agent and they will gladly take the necessary steps to get them kicked off Amazon, or you can report the breach yourself, I would be inclined to contact your licensing agent, most licensing agents have a direct contact in Amazon.
Seller_qRB1I7sZs592l
Had exactly the same problems a few years ago with the Chinese using our copyright images and linking their products to ours. According to Amazon T&C (small print), whatever you list on their sites, copyrighted or now, you give Amazon the right to allow 3rd parties to use them. I actually sent their policy wording to my copyright lawyers and they confirmed that is the position.
