Hey, guys. So today, I’m gonna talk about how to protect yourself from being sued when dropshipping. This wasn’t a question I was planning to answer but we’ve recently had a flood of comments and emails from people asking those questions so I knew I had to address it.
So here are the questions that I’m gonna be answering in this video. One, will you be sued if you use AliExpress product images that suppliers have publicly posted? Two, how can you stop yourself from being sued for using copyright images? Three, can you sell products from AliExpress that have trademarks on them?
So to find out the answers for these and how to stop yourself from being sued, keep watching this video. One, will you be sued if you use AliExpress product images? I’m gonna preface this with the fact that I am not a lawyer but my answer to this is
No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m gonna be honest. I find this question quite surprising because it’s quite common knowledge that China is the country of piracy and knock-offs, yet people ask me this question all the time. Piracy and knock-offs are rampant in China.
Pirated movies, games, and music are sold very publicly on the streets, even though it’s technically illegal, which is why I guess I’m a little bit surprised that people are concerned that Chinese suppliers are gonna pursue you in court for using their product images.
But I also understand because the thought of getting sued is scary so it makes sense that you would want to double check. I can tell you now, I am 99.9% certain that not only would a supplier not pursue you in
Court but that they would view you using their images as a smart thing. You see, in China, they have a very different cultural attitude towards piracy. It’s because in the West, we strongly value the rights of the individual. In China, they do not.
And in China, the idea that just one person should financially benefit from something that can be so easily and cheaply copied and distributed to the masses is crazy. And I want to be clear, I am neither agreeing or disagreeing with these ideas. I’m just explaining how things are different in China.
So when an AliExpress manufacturer posts photos of the products they are selling on their listing, they won’t have the same reaction as we would have in the West because those images are so easy to be copied and reused. Instead, they’ll be happy that you’re using them to sell more of their products because,
Of course, it makes them more money. And consider this, take the self-stir mug as an example. If we head over to AliExpress, guess what we will find? We’ll find that the manufacturers are stealing images from each other. The same images are used by different manufacturers to promote their own version of this product.
And more importantly, all of these suppliers are just manufacturing their own copy of this mug. Who even knows who was the original manufacturer and creator of the mug? And the same goes for the images, who knows who was the first manufacturer to take the common stock images for this mug?
It’s impossible to know. If the original creator in China was going to be suing anyone, they would be suing the manufacturing companies that are reusing them that are based in China, not some random person who lives halfway around the world.
But the fact is is that they’re not going to even sue their local manufacturing companies because their cultural attitudes towards intellectual property are entirely different to ours. So no, I don’t think you need to be worried that you’re going to get sued for reusing
Their images on your store but I am not a legal expert, I need to state that. If you’re still worried, my recommendation to you would be to simply message the supplier and ask them if they are okay with you reusing their images.
I’ve never met a supplier that would say no but it’s always nice to get their confirmation. Two, how can I avoid being sued for copyright images? In China, they may not care if you reuse images that originated there but in the West, it is an entirely different story.
I’ve had multiple friends that have been sued for making this mistake. I had one friend that got sent a bill for $10,000 for accidentally using copyright images. Interestingly enough, the lawsuit didn’t actually go through because it was for one of my friends
That was based here in New Zealand and here in New Zealand, the laws surrounding copyright damages are very different. Here, to claim damages of $10,000, you need to actually show that you lost $10,000 by someone illegally using your images. My friend was not making any money off the images.
It wasn’t a commercial website. When they realized that he was broke and had no money, they just dropped the lawsuit and he took the images done. And no, they hadn’t sent him a takedown notice. It’s a common misconception that you can skirt the law and just take down the images when
You get sent a notice. No, they don’t have to send you that. They are perfectly within their rights to just immediately sue you. But it was a good reminder that small websites that aren’t even making any money yet can still be sued for copyright infringement.
If my friend had been living in the USA, then that lawsuit would have gone very differently. He got very lucky. So don’t think that because you don’t have a super successful site yet that you’re not going to get sued. You still need to make sure that you’re following copyright laws.
An easy way to stop yourself from being sued for copyright is to use images that you’re allowed to use and an easy way to find them is with Google Images. On Google Images, click Settings and then click Advanced Search.
Type in what you want to search for and then just scroll down to usage rights and select free to use, share or modify, even commercially. You’ll be surprised at how many images you find that you’re allowed to use. Three, can I sell AliExpress products that have trademarks?
I’m gonna preface this again with the fact that I’m not a lawyer but no, no, no, no, no. You cannot sell items that are trademarked. I know that I’ve probably confused some of my viewers because of the video I created, “How to Dropship from AliExpress.”
In that video, I highlight a store from a friend of mine called World of Harry. It is a WooCommerce dropshipping store that dropships Harry Potter items from AliExpress. Now the reason why I highlighted the store wasn’t because I recommend dropshipping trademarked Harry Potter items like he is doing.
It’s because that website has a ton of SEO done to it and it’s getting lots of organic, free traffic from Google. I was using it as a case study for how you can optimize your own stores for the Google search engine. In that video, I say two things.
Firstly, I say that that store is very well optimized for Google but secondly, I also state that I do not recommend selling trademarked products. Dropshipping trademarked products is a risky business because it’s highly illegal. I’ll tell you now, I have a friend that told me a story about how his dropshipping business
Almost ended in disaster when he first started it. He was dropshipping products from China that were counterfeit and illegal but he was naive. He assumed that because the manufacturers were selling hundreds to thousands of these every week that it must have been legit and that they had every right to do so.
Well, he discovered that that was not the case one day when the Feds came knocking at his door. So he opened it and found that it was the Feds who had come to talk to him about how he was illegally selling counterfeit items.
Now, like my friend earlier, he also got lucky and managed to avoid any serious legal action or jail time but it could have so easily gone the other way. So do not sell anything that is branded with a trademark.
You might think that because the self-stir mug with Harry Potter on it is selling 200 units a week that the manufacturer must have the right to do so but they don’t so don’t sell it. Instead, sell this generic self-stir mug that has no trademarks or logos on it.
There are so many cool, generic products to dropship on AliExpress so don’t get lazy and start selling trademarked products even though they can be very easy money. So there we go, guys. I hope you found this video helpful.
If you liked it, I’d appreciate it if you gave it a thumbs up and subscribed to us here at Wholesale Ted for more great videos about selling online. And if you have any questions, be sure to ask them in the comments section below.
Admittedly, here at Wholesale Ted, we do get a lot of questions but we do our very best to answer as many as we can. And if you would like to start your own dropshipping business but you don’t know how, then you
Should be sure to download our free eBook, “How to Make $10,000 a Month Online with Dropshipping.” You’ll find a link on how to download this incredible, life-changing eBook in the video description below.
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