Another seller copied my eBay listing

VeRO, or the copyright agent

There are two routes. The VeRO Portal, reached from pages.ebay.com/vero, is eBay's own reporting system; eBay describes it as being only for rights owners or their authorized representatives. The second is a notice to eBay's designated agent at [email protected], or by post to its agent address in Draper, Utah.

VeRO is built for volume and suits a seller who expects to report repeatedly. The agent route is a standard DMCA notice and suits a one-off. We have not been able to read VeRO's registration requirements, because eBay does not publish them, so we confirm them when a case needs them.

Product photos: where ownership goes wrong

A listing complaint can fail on ownership rather than similarity. Three situations to check. Photos supplied by a manufacturer or wholesaler belong to them, not to any of the sellers using them, so neither you nor the copier can report the other. Photos taken by a freelance photographer belong to the photographer unless you have a written assignment, so check the contract before you swear that they are yours. And photos taken by an employee in the course of their job generally belong to the business.

If you shot the photos yourself, keep the original camera files, not the resized versions you uploaded. The metadata in an original file, the higher resolution, and the shots either side of the one you used are all evidence that a copier cannot produce. Write down where each photo was first published and when: your eBay listing, your own site, your social account. That date does a lot of the arguing for you when the other seller claims they were first.

How to report a copied listing

1. 1

   Capture the listing

   Save it as a PDF and note the item number. Listings end and relist under new numbers, and a capture with the item number is your evidence of what was there.

2. 2

   Match each element to your original

   Which photographs, and which paragraphs. Point to your listing or your own site where they first appeared, with the date.

3. 3

   Keep the originals

   The camera files with their metadata, or the written assignment from whoever photographed them for you. If the manufacturer supplied the photos, stop: they are not yours to report.

4. 4

   Report the item, not the seller

   One report per listing. A seller with forty copied listings needs forty identified items, not a complaint about the seller.

5. 5

   Keep the reference

   Record what you reported and when. If the seller relists, your history with eBay matters.

When the same seller is on other marketplaces

A seller who copies listings may not stop at one site. The same photographs can turn up on Amazon, Etsy, a Shopify store and a social shop, and each of those needs its own report through its own process. Etsy, for instance, asks an agent to upload a letter of authorization and waits to verify it before the first report; Amazon's form requires a signed-in account and acts on copyright, trademark and patent only.

We cover those separately: Etsy, Amazon and Shopify. If the copies are on the seller's own website, the free scan finds pages using your text and photos.

What happens to the other seller

A valid report removes the listing. Like every US platform relying on the safe harbor, eBay has to operate a repeat-infringer policy, so a pattern of valid reports against one seller is treated differently from a single one. What eBay does to an account is its decision.

The seller can counter-notify. If they do, the listing can be restored after 10 to 14 business days unless you start a court action. A seller running a real business may take that step, and we will tell you the day it happens.