NONONONONONONONONONO.
Basically, in short, it’s a big fat no.
Unless you’ve paid millions of pounds/dollars for the license from Disney, you simply aren’t licensed to sell Disney or Disney inspired products.
Disney are super strict on their copyrighted and trademarked items. Quite frankly, they are a huge business that work hard to maintain their brand – so they should be super strict in order to keep the profit to themselves. This applies to ”Disney Inspired” products as well.
If you look at a product and think – “that reminds me of Disney”, then that item is going against basic copyright laws.
This applies to ANY AND ALL famous brands.
This also applies to pretty much every type of item you can think of. Big corporate brands are hot on making sure they have the trademarks for all items.
Whether you’re selling wax melts in the shape of Disney characters, prints with Dr Suess quotes or baby items with Peter Rabbit on – you’re infringing on huge copyright and trademark laws and THEY WILL SUE YOU.
No second chances here guys, they will absolutely sue the hell out of you.
Disney have a whole legal team dedicated to searching out Etsy stores that are selling unlicensed Disney items.
Again, I don’t agree with people using other brands images for financial gain – these companies work hard to protect and build their brand.
A lot of people come to me and say, “But Jess, I’ve seen shops online selling Disney and other branded items for years and they haven’t been caught!”
Yet. They haven’t been caught yet. Any brand that catches you using their images without permission have a right to sue for damages and the profit you earned from using these images. That could potentially span back 10 years if that’s how long you’ve been using their images. You will have no legal leg to stand on and will be forced to not only pay back the company, but potentially shut down your business completely.
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