Etsy Reporting Portal To Streamline IP Infringement Claims
Etsy announced a new Reporting Portal today to streamline the process of brand registration and copyright/intellectual property protection.
Earlier this year, we let you know that we’d be investing in keeping our marketplace to keep it a safe and secure destination for handmade, vintage, and special items. We also let you know that we’d be expanding our efforts to remove listings that don't meet our policies.
One important way we’re doing this: making it easier to register your brand and report listings that you suspect may violate your intellectual property rights.
That’s where our new Etsy Reporting Portal comes in. This convenient, powerful, and supportive tool helps you register and protect your brand in five steps, then view all of your intellectual properties and reports in one place. You can use keywords to search millions of listings, then browse, compile, and report any suspected infringing listings to our dedicated team. And once reported, our Trust & Safety team will review and take action if necessary, and inform you of the result.
There’s more good news: Brands that don’t currently sell on Etsy will be using the portal, too. This will help us remove listings that violate brand rights and don't meet our policies, ensuring that Etsy remains a safe, trusted place to purchase unique and handmade items.
Ready to register and start protecting your brand? Go to the Etsy Reporting Portal to get started.
And if intellectual property has you stumped, check out our new Ultimate Guide to Intellectual Property on the topic for guidance on how to own and grow your brand on Etsy.
Etsy's Ultimate Guide to Intellectual Property gives sellers best practices and tips for protecting their brands and making sure they are following important rules and legal requirements.
Etsy Staff
We've streamlined our process to make reporting easier.
Quick, easy, and convenient:
Register your brand in 5 steps, then view all of your intellectual property rights and reports in one place.Powerful:
Use keywords related to your brand to search millions of listings, then browse, compile, and report any suspected infringing listings to our dedicated team.Dedicated support:
Once reported, our team jumps into action to investigate. If a listing is removed, the seller is notified.
It's interesting that Etsy is touting dedicated support for the brands doing the reporting, but doesn't mention support for the sellers on the receiving end.
Lack of access to customer support is one of the main issues cited by sellers who are planning an Etsy Strike for next week.
When I asked strike organizer Kristi Cassidy about top seller concerns besides the recent fee increase, she said:
For others in our community, it’s the poor support. When your livelihood can be taken down by a computer, and you can’t access a human to fix the computer’s mistake, that’s a serious issue.
For the support issues, we want a system that issues “golden” support tickets that guarantee a conversation with a real human being for anyone who has a shop that’s been shut down or otherwise hobbled by AI.
This new IP reporting system could certainly exacerbate that support problem if sellers end up on the losing end of take down notices with no way to appeal.
What do you think of Etsy's new IP violation reporting system? Do you trust Etsy to investigate and action these reports fairly? Let us know in the comments below!
