Trademark infringement is a big problem, and each online marketplace where print on demand items are sold handles the issue differently.
Intellectual property theft is also a common occurrence. As a web developer, I can speak to how easily many graphics can be stolen from certain platforms.
I'd like to use this article to make people aware of what you can expect from the different platforms in terms of protecting your designs from thieves, as well as handling uploads that toe the line on trademark infringement.
T-Shirt Designs Rejected
If t-shirt design is deemed to infringe on someones intellectual property, or contains a trademarked phrase or graphic, it should not be printed and the order should be canceled.
Marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Redbubble & Gearbubble can use automated image matching software & trademark database queries to attempt to filter out bad designs when the product listing is created. As you can imagine, building out software to do so is another story and only Amazon even attempted to take a stab at it (and did a pretty poor job, with terrible documentation).
What this means for sellers is that outside of Amazon Merch we basically have to police ourselves. Uploading Merchant fulfilled products to Amazon via Seller Central will also work just fine, even if Amazon Merch rejected them. go figure.
But just because we can get away with it doesn't mean we should.
You need to be in it for the long haul to really get the most out of your print on demand passive income stream, and infringing on intellectual property will eventually catch up with you and get your account(s) shut down.
A Breakdown by Platform
Here's my personal experience with each marketplace & fulfillment partner:
| Platform / Marketplace | Upload Image detection? | Upload Phrase detection? | Are Your Designs Protected? |
|---|---|---|---|
 | no | no | yes (you control the images) |
 | yes | yes | no (rendered @ 679x635 px) |
 | no | no | yes (you control the images) |
 | no | no | yes (you control the images) |
 | no | no | no (rendered @ 750x1000 px) |
 | no | no | no (rendered @ 1000x1200 px) |
 | yes (manual) | no | yes (not visible to public) |
Automated Detection
As you can see, Amazon Merch is by far the strictest with their upload policy, while the rest have some catching up to do.
Protecting Designs From Theft
When you see "yes", this means that you control the product images and can take protective measures like watermarking your designs to help prevent thieves from stealing them.
Where you see "no", you should see the dimensions that your designs are rendered at by default on the product images. These values represent the maximum resolution that someone can download them at.
You don't need to be a Photoshop expert to remove a background from most designs. Once removed, the software is damn good at blowing up designs beyond their initial resolution (they will likely appear pixelated, but tend to still look presentable).
Uploading to Amazon via Seller Central will seemingly let you list whatever you want, which is curious since they clearly have made some attempt to create automated software that detects trademark infringing designs.
Once a listing is live, it can be reported to the Amazon content team and they will take your listing down immediately.
This should raise some eyebrows, because what if your content is NOT infringing?
I've dealt with this situation in the past where my listing was reported and shut down, even though it should not have been.
My recourse was to contact seller support with a link to the trademark on tmsearch.uspto.gov, explaining that while the phrade WAS trademarked, it was not protected on the specific product I had it listed on.
They very quickly reinstated my listing, and I was alerted via the email you see below:
Amazon Merch has a loosely defined content policy - they have been getting better over time, but it's still nearly impossible to find a list of words & phrases that are disallowed.
The general rule of thumb when it comes to words & phrases is to avoid anything that might be distasteful, or related to human tragedy.
In late 2018 they also announced that a new list of words would be disallowed if a shirt was offered in youth sizes, making it even harder to write out bullet points and descriptions. I've mentioned that I actually stopped attempting to do so altogether because I didn't think it warranted putting my account at risk just to get indexed on some additional secondary keywords. It also slows down the upload process.
They also have basic image detection software in place, while it does not currently read text from uploaded graphics and check that word or phrase against a trademark database, it will reject designs that it sees as bad.
What you can do to protect yourself:
- Read my article on how to avoid trademark infringement
- Download & install the free Merch Security Chrome extension
- Check out the /r/AmazonMerch subreddit's list of "gotcha" words for the new youth content policy
Sadly, even when you've done no wrong and hold the rights to tardemarked work, sometimes it can work against you on Amazon Merch.
Check out this Merch horror story where someone who held the trademark to their design had one of their best sellers removed by an automated sweep (& could not be reinstated, losing sales rank). Their tier 8,000 account was also put into a manual review period as a result of the misinterpreted infringement.
ebay will not try and stop you from creating product listings that might infringe on IP or even be fake goods.
They rely extremely heavily on buyers policing their marketplace for them via the feedback system & reporting listings with infringing content.
This is my way of saying you can get away with a lot on ebay, and you can open multiple seller accounts for free with no drawbacks other than the lack of feedback.
Etsy doesn't seem to have any automated detection in place when it comes to creating new listings.
If someone reports a listing, they react similar to how Amazon's support team does and removes the listing immediately. You have the option of reaching out to them to get it reinstated, but I've never personally attempted to do so.
Etsy has been known to be very quick to close down seller accounts, even faster than Amazon Merch. I have personally experienced this (not for trademark infringement, but for selling a product that they said didn't fit the image they want to maintain as an online marketplace), and I can say first hand that they will not hesitate to close your account with no chance of re-opening and no refunds for listing fees, so do your best to stay OFF their radar.
This is the email you will receive from Etsy legal (legal@etsy.com) if they detect infringement.
If you have too many repeat offenses, you will receive a final warning:
Yep - I received this email in response to a listing that was reported by someone, even though it didn't infringe in any way on anything. That's part of the game though, unfortunately.
It's especially bad in Amazon Merch where tons of ripped off designs are reposted & undercut the original. But similar to Merch, Etsy doesn't have an adequate content team to protect people like me from wrongful reports.
I'm going to start a second Etsy account soon in preparation of losing my primary one :(
Redbubble makes you check a box indicating that you have the rights to sell a design when you create listings on their platform, and if a design is reported, they will remove it.
I'm not too sure how lenient they are when it comes to closing down accounts, as I haven't pushed the button too far.
One thing Redbubble is known for is making it particularly easy to steal designs from their platform. They do grant publishers the ability to watermark their images automatically through the Redbubble platform, but it doesn't seem to really deter theiefs.
This is the email you will receive from Redbubble DMCA support (dmca.support@redbubble.com) if they detect infringement.
In my experience, Gearbubble does not have any filters when it comes to detecting illegal content while creating products, nor do they review the designs before printing them on products.
They basically are the wild west and you can pretty much get away with whatever you want, based on my experience using them for over a year.
Unlike Gearbubble, Printful will do a manual review of your content before printing it onto a product.
This means they will let you create products with content that may infringe on trademarks or copyrights, but if it sells you may get an email like the one you see below, basically telling you that they're not going to manufactur the product(s).
After I received the email above, I tabbed over to Gearbubble, uploaded the design to a shirt, and recreated the order on their platform & had it shipped out to the customer without any issues.
