Despite having e-commerce selling experience still one of our biggest challenges is dealing with intellectual property issues. During our selling career, we understood that a small mistake, like a similar design, copyright keyword, or a similar supplier image, could cause a serious suspension. We understood the importance of unique and self-created content for our brand, as a small ignorance or copying a random product image from the internet can lead to disaster. Over time, we have crafted the key points to ensure that we stay safe by enhancing our performance and upgrading our success. We are proud to share these lessons with our seller community so they can keep their business safe:
We identified that the biggest mistake a seller makes is that he/she unknowingly select a product that looks similar to the famous brands. Sellers randomly pick the product image, trademark, text, and other content from the internet to use I their product listing. They ignore the most important fact that some items have unique shapes, some have trademarked names or copyrighted content, whereas they use some other listings’ used images that don’t fully belong to them. Amazon’s algorithm notices such listings and marks those small similarities, and that’s when sellers realize that intellectual property violations don’t happen only when they copy something, but instead, intellectual property violations happen when you don’t check everything properly.
How we Overcame these Mistakes
Over the years, we observed Amazon’s algorithm and learned about its policies and behavior. After complete understanding, we changed our entire approach:
- We began conducting a thorough analysis of each listing before publishing the listing on Amazon. We carefully check every product trademark and patent right before we launch it.
- We stopped using supplier photos and began creating our own images.
- We started to write our own listing content instead of following competitor templates. This reduced our risk by more than half.
We always recommend avoiding products with special shapes or signature designs. If something looks unique, it is probably protected. This understanding helps sellers to avoid many problems in the holiday season when brands and Amazon become extremely strict.
What processes do we follow to Stay Safe:
- We redesign products to make them original.
- We check every keyword to avoid using trademarked terms.
- We take our own product photos instead of using anything from online sources.
- We stay away from high-risk categories during the holiday season.
- We keep all design files, packaging proofs, and invoices ready for immediate usage.
We confirm that most intellectual property violations are avoidable. We can prevent them by taking a few steps, then any seller can do the same. The key is to stay original, do proper checks, and never rush into launching a product without understanding who actually owns the design or the name.
Note: The Holiday season is the most sensitive season, but it becomes easy to manage when you know how to stay safe.
By learning from our expert processes, you can avoid the stress of IP complaints and keep your account safe!