Trademark & Copyright infringement on Etsy
Etsy is cracking down and by reading this blogpost, you are going to learn when and when you should not be copying or getting inspiration from other Etsy Sellers
I’m really excited to bring you this information because I know that Etsy sellers have encountered a lot of takedowns recently and gotten a lot of warning letters which can basically jeopardize your entire account and your ability to list products on the Etsy platform forever Etsy sellers are receiving notices that look like these that let them know hey you know what
“Somebody has reported your account because there has been a violation of someone’s trademark or copyrighted works“
So what does it mean when you have violated somebody’s trademark what does it mean if you have violated somebody’s copyright well let’s just take for example a very popular artist who we all recognize let’s just say for the sake of this blogpost that that person would be Britney Spears so if Britney Spears has her name registered or even if she doesn’t have her name registered at this point we pretty much all know who Britney Spears is her songs or that she’s a pop icon.
Let’s say you take Britney Spears’s name and you change the font a couple of times and you put it on merchandise like coffee mugs or t-shirts or sweatshirts maybe even caps and you put all of those into different Etsy listings and then you receive a notice from Etsy that says:
hey you have violated somebody’s trademark well
You’re probably wondering why am I receiving this notice because there’s a million other Etsy listers with this type of listing also selling Britney Spears merchandise and two you’re probably thinking well is Britney Spears scouring the internet and then just randomly you know notifying Etsy about certain listings why am I getting this notice I mean did I in fact commit some kind of infringement that is going to require me to take these listings down before my Etsy account just burns to the ground so if Britney Spears does in fact have a trademark on her name and you are taking this name and you are putting it on merchandise then you could in fact be committing trademark infringement because in case you don’t know a trademark is meant to protect a name a slogan a logo or a tagline.
So in this case Britney Spears would have potentially registered her name which we can do in a really quick trademark search and find out if that is the case but she may have protected her name so any unauthorized use of the name to sell merchandise and to profit off her name would likely be trademark infringement unless you have gotten her permission right or unless you entered into a licensing agreement but let’s say there’s a really iconic image of Britney Spears that everybody recognizes and you want to take that image and you want to put that on coffee mugs is that any different? is that trademark infringement?
Well that wouldn’t necessarily be trademark infringement if you’re just using a particular logo or image of Britney Spears then you more than likely would be committing copyright infringement so does Etsy care whether it’s trademark infringement or copyright infringement let me tell you that any type of infringement will get get you noticed by Etsy and will quickly get your account taken down so trademark infringement on Etsy can be because you either took somebody’s name somebody’s logo somebody’s slogan or somebody’s tagline and then you took it for yourself put on merchandise and then you started selling it because you are not the rightful owner of that trademark.
So if you want to be the owner of a specific trademark then by all means proceed with the trademark registration which you can learn how to do by scrolling down into the description below and taking my free master class but for lots of you who are Etsy sellers your main concern may or may not be with protecting your own trademark or copyright but you definitely want to avoid committing any type of trademark infringement because Etsy will only give you so many warnings before they finally just close your account and let me tell you that once your account is closed it will be very difficult to appeal it and to reinstate your account it’s almost impossible especially if you’ve committed an IP violation so does it work the same way for a copyright violation and you bet it does you’re going going to receive a notice once again from Etsy letting you know hey it has been brought to our attention that these items that you’re selling have been infringing on somebody’s copyright so you need to take them down and you know Etsy will leave it up to you to take those products down otherwise if they revisit your page and they see that you’re still listing them then they will potentially close your account and so that’s why you’re watching this video because you’re trying to avoid your account going up in flames right?
Etsy is the bread and butter for a lot of you and so you want to make sure that your account is in good standing all the time so this begs the question why in the world are you receiving this notice but other people may not be receiving this notice unfortunately it doesn’t really matter whether somebody else is receiving that notice and you are not the point is is that you have received it and so now it is going to be up to you to comply with Etsy’s terms so that you can maintain your account stop looking left, stop looking right I know that it’s very very tempting to do so and to say hey but she’s doing it too so if you report somebody else for doing that well you know it’s going to be up to Etsy to take it down or just leave them alone.
So before we dive into this please take a moment to tell me in the comments below how long you have been selling on the platform? are you a new seller? or are you a seasoned seller? have you been selling for just a few weeks? maybe months? even years? I want to know tell me in the comments below so you want to know if Britney Spears has her name registered.
Well let’s take a look, go to the trademark Electronics search system if you don’t know what I’m talking about you can find the information in one of my earlier blogpost in my channel or website here but it’s tmsearch.uspto.gov we will type in Britney Spears’s name here and let’s see what comes up so as you can see each one of these is actually an application that was submitted if you click on the name you will find what class it was registered for and other information like when this application was filed and whether or not she was able to obtain a registration so here for example she submitted an application for cosmetics and if we take a look at some other applications you will see that she registered entertainment services providing a website featuring musical performances Etc and if we go back again and click on a different one we will see that this is for jewelry watches backpacks hair ornaments and Bean dolls but does this application belong to Britney Spears and we can see if we look up who the owner is it says Britney Spears we do know that this is hers
Conclusion
This is just a way to find out what somebody in particular has registered and if they actually do own a registered trademark again click on the name and it’ll tell you in the details if there is a registration number you will know when it was registered third so if this video was helpful to you as an Etsy seller please give me a thumbs up down below and hit subscribe so that you can be notified of when I release more videos like this but please don’t forget to watch this Etsy related video right here because it’s a great continuation to your Etsy Journey so that you can learn about what mistakes to avoid and what you can continue to do without any worries