Can i sell trademark items [Expert Answers]

Last updated : Sept 23, 2022

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hey guys today I'm gonna be previewing dropshipping stores for my subscribers but it's a bit of a twist see after my last store of you I had lots of people asked me if I would review their stores because they weren't making as many sales as they had hoped well as I started to browse through these stores I became quite concerned some of them were making sales though not as many as they were hoping for but frankly they should be glad they weren't making them despite the fact that I have talked extensively on this channel before about how to protect yourself illegally when drop shipping and selling online these stores per absolute legal nightmares they were just begging to be shut down either from being sued or having their PayPal accounts with the Shopify payments account shut down frozen for deceptive business practice who cares if you make lots of money if paper freezes your account that is why in this video I am NOT going to be reviewing these stores for sales conversions and branding though of course if you guys watching this have any advice for them be sure to leave it in the comment section below instead I'm going to talk about what these stores need to do alias CP so that they don't get shut down and quick disclaimer I am NOT a lawyer so this is not official legal advice so with that hours away let's get started okay who is lucky victim number one and it is scoops world online Thomas congratulations on making four sales however as you're about to discover I am very concerned about those sales all right let's switch over to my computer and we will take a look okay so here we are in scoops world online so as you guys can see Thomas is selling phone cases phone accessories and headphones and again I am NOT reviewing these stores for sales and conversions you guys can leave Thomas your own advice in the comment section at the moment that I stepped inside the store I was thinking oh no phone cases are one of the most common items that engage in copyright and trademark infringement on Aliexpress and so scrolling down what do you think that I found yes I found copyright infringement everywhere take a look at this phone cover featuring photos of Mike Tyson photos have copyrights too this picture Bob Miley copyrighted these phone cases have almost certainly been produced illegally and let's take a look at these Marvel cases that you're selling Thomas these are all illegally made and sold you need to get rid of these ASAP see my concern Thomas is that these are the items that you've been successfully selling selling popular copyrighted characters like Captain America is super easy but why do you think it's easy it's easy because Marvel and Disney have poured squillions of dollars into making them super popular and I've done that so that they can make squillions of dollars back from selling their own merchandise and they're not gonna let you do that selling these phone cases is illegal and they are within their rights to sue you and this is something that you all need to keep in mind because copyright and trademark infringement is rampant in China because over there these laws are not enforced now after I told you all of that let me just confuse you for a second do you see this brand new kept in America action figure here I could go ahead and list this in my own store right now and sell it legally but wait Sarah you just said that you can't sell items that are copyrighted how are you able to sell this well it's because I went and bought it from a store this store bought these figurines legally from the licensed accredited distributor who got them directly from the copyright holders manufacturer because the store bought it legally from the distributor who acquired them legally from the copyright holders manufacturer admit that it was legal for me to purchase this and it's perfectly legal to resell items as long as you got them from a legal source the problem with Aliexpress suppliers though is they almost never had permission to actually use his copyrighted characters and thus they did not produce them legally in the first place and this also answers another question that I get a lot Sarah I want to sell this Flamingo water bottle but it has the name of the Chinese manufacturer transhome on it is that legal and the answer is yes when the Chinese manufacturer transhome winter made their own generic flamingo water bottle and then slept their own name on it they had every right to make it and every right to do so because they produced it legally they have the legal right to sell it to you which means that you then have the legal rights of one and resell it to customers hopefully I cleared that up all right so who is lucky but still number two and lucky victim number two is dog or trained by human sorry if I pronounced your name wrong Heymann alright humans so you joined the dropship club and you made sales and that's awesome but going through a store I can see there's a lot from the course that you skipped and this is potentially the worst thing that you skipped because you could lose everything from this mistake alright so let's switch over to your store alright so here we out your store haman dogger trend scrolling down I can't see any products with copyright infringement switch I'm relieved about but hold on hold on what's this what's this human something very important is missing from this footer and so when I saw that it was missing I thought oh it must be in the menu but no no it's not in there either so what am I talking about I'm talking about the refund policy page the fact that I couldn't find it anywhere stabbed to make me concerned that perhaps it didn't even exist and so I went to Google and I did a search for it and nope seemingly you have no refund policy on your site this needs to change this is something that I've actually talked about a lot on this channel and inside the dropship Club as well I actually give our members inside there a refund policy template I also recommend that you link to the refund policy page in the footer of your site that way it will be on every single page and all customers have no excuse for not having read it now here's the thing I don't actually think that a refund policy is a legal requirement at least I don't think it's a legal requirement in the USA but it's still very important for you as a merchant to have one think about this the customer goes and orders a shirt from you but it arrives and it's the wrong size it's too small for them and so they email you and they say oh hey I ordered a shirt from you but I ended up selecting the wrong size can I please get a refund and get a new shirt now not only is this a huge pain for you but you lose money if you follow through with this request so of course you email back the customer and say I'm sorry we only do refunds for faulty items but you see this consumer is used to the ridiculously generous return policies that huge stores like Macy's offer which by the way is not standard in the e-commerce world for small sellers and so this lovely customer goes wait you doesn't specify that there's no policy on your site how was I supposed to know that you wou

Thanks for your comment Lawrence Pellot, have a nice day.
- Aisha Kraemer, Staff Member

let's talk about trademark products should yourself trade my products on Instagram Facebook snapchat using the advertising platforms such as Facebook Ads Google AdWords using influencer marketing snapchat ads hi I am next from pixel next and welcome to my youtube channel where I talk about online businesses about e-commerce about entrepreneurship now I'm gonna get straight to the point and say that the answer is no and oh you cannot sell trademark products anywhere anytime especially if you're doing it for a profit in your business which is the reason why people do in the first place right before I go further into this let's first define what our trademark products or trademark items what does trademark mean trademarks are basically legally registered or established words or symbols used in representing a company its products and/or its services that was a definition from Google so trademark products are products that have established logos or brands or symbols from very established companies very popular companies that everyone knows about for instance from your favorite TV shows or movies such as Star Wars Marvel DC Comics and so on and so forth so you cannot sell these items on Shopify especially when your drop shipping it's actually very easy to find these kinds of products in Aliexpress when you do your product research just type in like Captain America mug and then there will be a mug with the Captain America picture on it you have the Marvel logo on it you have the Avengers pretty much is very easy to find these kinds of products on Aliexpress now just because it's illegal doesn't necessarily mean that it's not possible it's possible but it's very illegal now the only way to make this legal is if you have an authorized signed written consent from these companies to sell their products representing their brands logos plus there's a whole line of process a whole long line of process to go through documents to clear going through your lawyers and everything and in the end they also get royalties or cuts from the profits that of the products have you sold successfully with their brands so that is definitely not an option for you because you'd be spending too much money the money coming out of your pocket is gonna be too much then the money that's coming into your pocket especially when you don't have that money to begin with now there are some people who successfully sell these items they drop ship these items from Aliexpress in their Shopify stores to Facebook or Instagram they were able to do it like they they could sell Superman blankets Batman shoes Star Wars mugs it's very easy to solve these kinds of items to the society because they are very familiar the customer base are very familiar with these products now as I said there are some that do manage to get away with it they can sell small volumes of it but it is not worth it trust me on this it's never worth it just think about your long-term plan you want to be able to get to a point where you're very successful in e-commerce in your online business right you want to get super high sales volumes super high profits and be able to potentially maybe teach it off to other people if you sell these products you might get a small traction in the beginning a small initial fast traction your products will sell but it becomes a real problem when you start to scale up when these brands these companies find out that you've been making a profit off of their brands of the merchandise is representing their brands they are going to pursue you in the war of corn I'm sorry in the court of law when that happens and I say when not will when that happens you're pretty much screwed your business is screwed they have super big resources they're fully equipped with money teams of lawyers proof pretty much everything that you can think of they have it to crush you and your business to the ground thus in the end just sell non trademark items stay away stay clear away from trademarked ones I understand that it might be more appealing to sell Star Wars because you're very very passionate Star Wars fan but please it's it's not worth it plus there are millions literally millions of non trademark items on your Aliexpress they can drop ship from there you have loads of products to choose from so you're not limited to just trademark products and most winning products from Shopify gurus who have actually made it to the top and everything in e-commerce they've made big profits off of non trademark products when they scaled up when the item was trending at the time when the customers really loved that product at that time remember there will always be potential but stay away from things that will crush your business that's all I have for this video let me know in the comment section down below about your thoughts on selling trademarked items on Shopify especially when your drop shipping let me know about your opinions if you think that there's maybe some way to circumvent that loophole maybe if you found the content helpful consider subscribing here the bell icon that comes with it so that you'll be notified of future video releases remember to grab your free Shopify drop shipping hack book down in the description below it's a beginner friendly step-by-step guide on Shopify drop shipping also there's a link down below for a free 14-day Shopify trial now disclaimer it is an affiliate link so if you do use that link to make a purchase or anything I will receive a small commission but it will come at no additional cost to you it just helps support the channel helps me create more content for you guys to help you and your business just check out the platform for free play around with it see if it suits your business model if it doesn't then just cancel it and here's a bonus tip before I end this video if you found that the 14-day free trial given by Shopify is not enough maybe you have other errands to do maybe you cannot spend that much time you have you have to go to work just ask for an extension of the free trial from Shopify so you can do that in two ways you can either email certify and support at Shopify com or you can go to the URL in the browser help Shopify com forward slash questions and just ask for an extension on your free trial I hope this video the hack book the bonus tip helped you thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Applause]

Thanks Stanford your participation is very much appreciated
- Aisha Kraemer

About the author

Aisha Kraemer

I've studied economic anthropology at Hult International Business School in Cambridge and I am an expert in religious education. I usually feel high. My previous job was industrial machinery mechanics I held this position for 27 years, I love talking about rock tumbling and ballet. Huge fan of Kodak Black I practice vault and collect antique.