All right well thank you everyone for your helpful comments! Even the ones that were less than nice. Either way, it was helpful. I went and removed all mentions of said brands. I did read up a little on it about fair use, including nominative and comparative advertising.
Unfortunately, if you are in the camp where you believe it is illegal to "make money off someone else's brand" then I would suggest you do study up a little. there are few things that are protected under "fair use" and describing ones products as "compatible with" a trademark is considered fair use. Comparing your product with that of a trademarked product (ie. better quality paper than xyz trademark) is considered fair use under comparative advertising. Not to mention although LV also sells what I sell they are not known that product, so we are not in direct competition.
I understand where Etsy is coming from, if I were running it I would probably side with the big guys too and not risk huge lawsuits, but then don't pretend like we are a community and we got each other's back when they don't, at least not when it matters. I get that it is MY responsibility to know the laws and I just wish that Etsy was a little bit clearer when it came to messing with your business. If I get a policy violations clearly tell me what I did and the clear course of action and a way to dispute. (I’m sure it’s hidden somewhere in their million articles.) Who wants to really invest their time and money to run and Etsy shop when it can all be shut down if Etsy decides you may have done something wrong.
Also for context, Etsy flagged the listing, only one out of 60+ with the same descriptions and tags, I messaged them and the returned saying the violation had been reversed and that I didn’t have to do anything else and the listing was re-instated. So… that would make one believe that I did nothing wrong.
I know this is long but one more thing straight from Etsy’s policies, more specifically Intellectual Property Policy
*Sellers are responsible for ensuring they have all necessary rights to their content and that they are not infringing or violating any third party’s rights by posting it.
Nowhere does it state that Etsy has its own rules or policies on this subject. It clearly states, follow the law and nothing else.
Anyway, I know Etsy is going to do what they want and the little guy can do almost nothing about it, except one day become the good guy.
Good luck everyone! Happy selling. I’ve included some examples that I found from different areas of the internet.
- A label indicating “containing Takara genuine sweet cooking rice wine” on “soup stock” was considered descriptive fair use because it merely indicated the raw material used in the soup stock.
- Use of the BMW brand by a third party for the purpose of indicating to the public that he sells, repairs, or maintains BMW vehicles, or even that he is specialized in such activities, will not infringe BMW’s rights provided the mark is not used in such a way as to create the impression that there is a commercial connection (e.g., affiliation) between the third party and the proprietor of the mark.
