Selling on Amazon.com

[ecommerceprofit]

Do I have to give them co-ownership of my copyright? I have thousands of original images that took time and money. I really want to sell on Amazon but this is totally unfair in my opinion...

Their contract...

[edited by: lorax at 3:03 pm (utc) on May 29, 2006]
[edit reason] removed quote - waiting for URL [/edit]

[shri]

From what I know, the sellers materials are the descriptions and images associated, not the product itself. (Sounds like you want to sell digital images?)

The descriptions and images are subject to editing and quality control and are re-licensed to amazon affiliates for use on their sites.

[BaseVinyl]

Ummm...what is it exactly you are selling?

[ecommerceprofit]

I'm selling widget physical products - I should have been more clear - I don't want to sell the images...I just don't want my competitors using the images for themselves or hand over co-copyright to Amazon.

[Beagle]

It's not a co-copyright; it's a license, although a broad enough one that Amazon can, say, redesign its page formats or change its affiliate advertising rules without consulting you. One thing I'm not sure of is the "irrevocable" statement - surely there's a way for either of you to end the contract?

The license is for whatever you send them to be used in your advertising. Unless you're going to be selling thousands of widgets, there shouldn't be any need for you to supply them with thousands of images. In fact, a lot of people sell things on Amazon without providing any images of them - the customer gets a generic "image not available" box. Same thing with a company trademark. You don't have to send Amazon a copy of your trademark and give them the license to use it, if you're willing to go without the branding advantage (unless there's some other place in the contract that requires you to supply them with your trademark).

Your competitors could copy your trademark from Amazon as easily as they could from your own site, but from how I read that paragraph you're not giving Amazon any right to sublicense it to anyone but their own affiliates and associated sites.

[ecommerceprofit]

Beagle - thanks for your post - I'm not sure if I will be protected from my copyright being diluted but after reading your post perhaps I may not be reading this contract correctly - I need to involve my intellectual property attorney - thanks for the help!