Guide
DMCA takedown notice template (2026)
Another seller is using your product photos. The fix is a DMCA takedown notice: a short written notification, defined by US copyright law, that requires a hosting provider to remove copied work. It is free to send and you do not need a lawyer to send it. Here is the full template, what each field is legally doing, a filled-in example, where to send it, and what happens after. It is the same notice Knockoff prepares, so every line has a job.
The template
Copy it, replace everything in brackets, delete what does not apply. Plain text is fine. Hosts accept notices by email, and platform forms take these same items as separate fields. The numbered sections map one to one onto the six elements US law requires in a takedown notice under section 512(c)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Providers act on these because section 512 ties their safe harbor to it: a host that ignores valid notices risks becoming liable for the copies itself.
Subject: DMCA takedown notice: unauthorized use of copyrighted photographs To the Designated Copyright Agent: This is a notification of claimed copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c). 1. Identification of the copyrighted work I am the owner of the photograph(s) identified below, or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner, [OWNER OR COMPANY NAME]. Original photograph(s): [DIRECT URL OF EACH ORIGINAL PHOTO] Published on my product page: [URL OF YOUR PRODUCT PAGE] First published: [DATE] 2. Identification of the infringing material The following listing uses the photograph(s) above without authorization: Listing URL: [EXACT URL OF THE LISTING PAGE, NOT THE STORE HOMEPAGE] Copied image(s): [DIRECT URL OF EACH COPIED IMAGE FILE, IF AVAILABLE] Item number: [LISTING ID OR ITEM NUMBER, IF ON A MARKETPLACE] Please remove or disable access to this material. 3. Contact information Name: [FULL LEGAL NAME] Company: [COMPANY NAME] Address: [STREET, CITY, STATE, ZIP, COUNTRY] Phone: [PHONE NUMBER] Email: [BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESS] 4. Good faith statement I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. 5. Accuracy and authority The information in this notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. 6. Signature /s/ [TYPED FULL LEGAL NAME] Date: [DATE] Attached: dated screenshot of the listing, archived copy of the listing page, and a side by side of my original photograph and the copied image.
What each field is doing
Every field exists because the statute demands it or because leaving it out gets notices ignored. A notice that skips a required element does not count as putting the provider on notice. There is one narrow save: if you identified the work, the material and its location well enough, the provider must try to contact you about the rest before it can disregard the notice. Do not rely on that. Here is what is load-bearing.
1. Your work
Copyright protects the photograph, not the product in it, so identify the photo. Link the image file itself or the product page it appears on. The first-published date is not required by the statute, and you should include it anyway: it shows your photo existed before their listing did, which is the whole story in one line. If one seller has lifted your entire catalog, the law accepts a representative list of works rather than an exhaustive one.
2. Their copy
The statute requires information reasonably sufficient for the provider to locate the material. In practice that means the exact listing URL, one per copy. Naming the store's homepage instead of the listing is the classic self-inflicted rejection: the reviewer on the other end will not go hunting through a storefront on your behalf. On marketplaces, add the item number or listing ID, because their forms key on it. Direct image URLs are a bonus that removes all doubt about which files you mean.
3. Your contact details
Required, and not private. Most platforms forward your notice to the seller, contact details included, and notices sent to search engines can end up in the Lumen database, a public archive that held more than 75 million notices as of 2026. Use a business address and a business email you are content to see published. Set that up before you send, not after.
4. The good faith statement
Not sworn, but not decorative either. The Ninth Circuit held in Lenz v. Universal (2016) that a sender must consider fair use before firing off a notice. The standard is subjective good faith, so an honest judgment that turns out wrong does not sink you, but skipping the thought entirely can. A seller reselling your actual product with your actual photos, a reviewer showing your product, a comparison article: think before you claim.
5. Accuracy and authority
Read the wording closely, because almost everyone gets it wrong. The penalty of perjury rides on one claim only: that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner. You are swearing to who you are, not swearing an opinion about the law. The rest of the exposure lives in section 512(f), which makes a knowing, material misrepresentation that content is infringing punishable by the other side's damages and legal fees. It has teeth: Diebold agreed to pay $125,000 in 2004 after the first ruling under that section. Claim only photos that are actually yours.
6. The signature
A typed full name is a valid electronic signature. The /s/ convention in the template is the standard way to mark one. No ink, no scan, no notary. Just make sure the person signing is the person from element five: the owner or their authorized agent, because that is the claim the perjury statement covers.
The same notice, filled in
A fictional example, so you can see the level of specificity that gets acted on. Every URL below is invented.
Subject: DMCA takedown notice: unauthorized use of copyrighted photographs To the Designated Copyright Agent: This is a notification of claimed copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c). 1. Identification of the copyrighted work I am the owner of the photographs identified below. Original photographs: https://meridiancandle.example.com/cdn/products/sandalwood-8oz-front.jpg https://meridiancandle.example.com/cdn/products/sandalwood-8oz-lifestyle.jpg Published on my product page: https://meridiancandle.example.com/products/sandalwood-candle-8oz First published: March 2, 2025 2. Identification of the infringing material The following listing uses the photographs above without authorization: Listing URL: https://glowdeals.example.net/products/luxury-sandalwood-candle Copied images: https://glowdeals.example.net/cdn/imports/luxury-sandalwood-1.jpg https://glowdeals.example.net/cdn/imports/luxury-sandalwood-2.jpg Please remove or disable access to this material. 3. Contact information Name: Dana Meridian Company: Meridian Candle Co. Address: 400 Commerce Street, Suite 210, Nashville, TN 37201, USA Phone: (555) 014-2288 Email: [email protected] 4. Good faith statement I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. 5. Accuracy and authority The information in this notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. 6. Signature /s/ Dana Meridian Date: August 18, 2026 Attached: dated screenshot of the listing, archived copy of the listing page, and a side by side of my original photographs and the copied images.
Three questions before you send it
Is the photo actually yours? The photographer owns a photo by default. Employee photos shot on the job belong to the company as work made for hire; a freelancer's photos stay the freelancer's unless your contract assigns them in writing. And if you and the copycat both licensed the same stock image or the same supplier's photos, you own nothing they have taken. Sort this out before you sign a statement about authority.
Is it a copyright problem? This letter covers copied creative work: your photos, your copy, your graphics. It does not cover a seller who knocked off your product and shot their own photos of it, because copyright does not protect ideas, product designs, or useful articles. It does not cover someone trading on your brand name or logo: a trademark cease and desist letter is a different letter, with a different template and a different set of risks. Send this notice at the wrong problem and the best case is a rejection.
Could they call it fair use? Reviews, commentary, comparison, criticism. If your photo appears in that kind of context rather than on a sales listing, stop and think, because that is exactly the case Lenz says you must consider. A copycat selling with your photos is not fair use, and that is the case this page is about.
One more thing worth knowing before you press send: takedown notices are not confidential. Between forwarding to the seller and public archives like Lumen, assume everything in the notice except your phone number will eventually be readable by strangers. That is not a reason to skip the notice. It is a reason to write one you would stand behind in public.
Where to send it
Send the notice to whoever can take the listing down. That party is rarely the seller. This is also the difference between a takedown notice and a cease and desist letter: a cease and desist goes to the seller and asks, with no statute behind it, while a takedown notice goes to the provider, which has legal reasons of its own to act.
On a platform or marketplace, use the platform's form. A copy on a Shopify store goes to Shopify's copyright notice form, which asks for these same elements field by field and wants a direct link to every infringing page. Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart and the social platforms each run their own intake, and the routes differ enough that we keep a separate guide covering which form each platform wants. If the copy sits on a Shopify store specifically, the walkthrough for a copy hosted on Shopify covers that route end to end.
On an independent website, find the host. Search the US Copyright Office's DMCA Designated Agent Directory for the company behind the site. If you cannot tell who that is, run the domain through ICANN's lookup: the registrar and name servers tell you which host or proxy is in play. If the answer is Cloudflare, know that Cloudflare is usually a pass-through, not the host. It forwards copyright complaints to the hosting provider and the site operator, which both delivers your complaint and tells you who the real host is. A small number of offshore hosts advertise that they ignore US notices entirely; when you hit one, spend your energy on search removal and payment processors instead. The full order of operations for a cloned site is in the playbook for a copied website.
Where each marketplace takes a notice differs, and so does what each one asks for before you start: which marketplaces take a form and which take the letter, with the link for each one.
For search results, tell Google directly. Google's copyright removal process de-lists the offending pages from search, which does not delete the copy but does starve it of traffic. The scale of that pipeline is documented in the Copyright Office's 2020 report on section 512: Google went from under 3 million URLs noticed in its first twelve years combined to roughly 882 million URLs in 2017 alone.
Attach evidence that outlives the listing
Copies disappear the moment a seller senses trouble, and a takedown claim about a page nobody can load goes nowhere. Capture first, then send.
- A dated, full-page screenshot of the listing with the URL visible in frame.
- An archived copy of the listing page, saved to the Internet Archive or an equivalent neutral third party, so the evidence does not live only on your laptop.
- A side by side of your original photo and the listing image, which lets a reviewer confirm the match in five seconds.
- Your originals within reach: raw files, your photographer's invoice, a dated capture of your own product page.
That list is not theoretical. When Knockoff prepares a case, the evidence pack has to contain the timestamped screenshot, the archived copy and the side by side before a case is ready for approval. A match only counts in the first place when your photo appears in the seller's own listing gallery, not merely somewhere on the page. Hold your own evidence to the same bar and your notice reads like it was prepared by someone who has done this before.
What happens after you send it
A valid notice obligates the provider to remove or disable the material expeditiously. The law defines no deadline, most platforms publish no timing, and any vendor who promises one is selling. What the numbers show is that clean notices mostly work: Etsy, one of the few marketplaces that publishes its figures, processed 85,591 infringement reports in 2024, rejected 15 percent of them, and saw counter notices on 9 percent of copyright reports. Etsy does not publish why reports get rejected, but completeness is the one variable you control, and sloppiness is common across the industry: an academic review of takedown requests, cited in the Copyright Office's 2020 report on section 512, found roughly 4 percent targeted content that did not even match the identified work.
If the seller files a counter notice, the material comes back in 10 to 14 business days unless you notify the provider that you have filed a court action to restrain them. That clock is in the statute, and it means a counter notice hands the decision back to you: escalate to court, or let it return and fight on other fronts. Counter notices are sworn and require consent to US federal jurisdiction, which is why anonymous copycat operations rarely file them.
Then expect the relist. The same photos come back under a new seller account, a new listing, a new domain. The first notice is the expensive one; if you kept the template filled in and the evidence organized, every repeat costs ten minutes. The pattern has a name among sellers, whack-a-mole, and surviving it is mostly a filing-cabinet problem. It also compounds in your favor: providers must maintain a repeat infringer policy to keep their safe harbor, so the second and third notice against the same seller carry more weight than the first, provided your records connect them.
Registration is separate from the notice
Nothing on this page requires a copyright registration. Your photographs are protected from the moment they are fixed, and the notice works on ownership alone. Registration is about what happens if a notice is not enough: you must register a US work before you can sue over it, and statutory damages plus attorney's fees are only on the table if you registered before the copying began or within three months of first publication.
The US Copyright Office charges $45 to $65 to register a single work online, and $55 for a group of up to 750 photographs in one claim. For a product catalog, that group option is the practical one: a few hundred photos, one fee, pennies per photo, and the option of real damages if a copycat ever makes litigation worth it. Register each new photo batch inside the three month window and the option stays open.
When one letter is not the problem
If you are dealing with one copy, this template and an afternoon are all you need. What the template does not solve is finding the copies, proving each one, and doing it all again when the same photos resurface next month on a different marketplace.
That ongoing half is what Knockoff does. Connect your Shopify store by domain, no API key and no customer data, and your product photos become the reference set. When a confirmed copy turns up, you get a complete case: the timestamped screenshot, the archived page, the side by side, and this exact notice already written for that listing, reviewed by a person at Knockoff before it reaches you. You approve it and submit it through the platform's own form, and if the listing comes back, a follow-up case opens on its own. The honest limits: Shopify stores only, you file each notice yourself, and nobody can promise removals, including us. See what happens between a confirmed match and a notice ready to send, or read about having the notice written and the evidence assembled for you. Plans start at $99 a month, monthly billing, 30-day money back: plans and pricing.
Questions
Does a DMCA takedown notice cost money? +
No. Writing and sending the notice is free, and every platform reporting form is free to use. The costs sit elsewhere: registering your copyright with the US Copyright Office costs $45 to $65 for a single work, or $55 for a group of up to 750 photographs, and that only matters if you later sue. Takedown services charge for preparation and monitoring, not for any filing fee, because there is no filing fee.
How long does a DMCA takedown take? +
US law says the provider must act expeditiously, and defines no deadline. Most platforms publish no timing at all, so plan on days to a couple of weeks and treat anything faster as a bonus. The one clock that is defined runs the other way: after a valid counter notice, the provider restores the material in 10 to 14 business days unless you file a court action to restrain the seller and tell the provider. For context, Etsy processed 85,591 infringement reports in 2024 and rejected 15 percent of them, so a clean, complete notice is the best speed lever you control.
Do I need to register my copyright before sending a notice? +
No. Your photos are protected from the moment you take them, and no platform asks for a registration number on a copyright report. Registration matters later: you must register a US work before you can file a lawsuit over it, and statutory damages are only available if you registered before the copying started or within three months of first publishing the work. The group option covers up to 750 photographs for $55, which for a product catalog works out to pennies per photo.
What happens if the seller files a counter notice? +
The provider forwards it to you, and the removed material goes back up not less than 10 and not more than 14 business days later, unless you first notify the provider that you have filed a court action seeking to restrain the seller. A counter notice is also sworn under penalty of perjury, and it requires the seller to accept the jurisdiction of a US federal court, which is a real commitment for an anonymous overseas operator. Most copycats never file one. If they do, the decision about going to court is yours.
Who owns the copyright in a product photograph? +
The person who took it, by default. If an employee shot your photos as part of their job, the company owns them as work made for hire. If a freelance photographer shot them, the photographer owns the copyright unless your contract assigns it in writing. Check that before you claim ownership in a sworn statement. If the rights sit with your photographer, you can still send the notice as their authorized agent, with their written permission.
What if the host ignores my notice? +
Some offshore hosts advertise exactly that, and US law does not reach them. You still have moves. Ask Google to remove the pages from search results, which cuts off most of the traffic. Report the store to its payment processor, because a site that cannot take cards cannot sell. And if the copy sits on a platform like Shopify, Amazon or Etsy, the platform's own form works regardless of where the seller lives.
Is there a free DMCA takedown service? +
The notice is the free takedown service: every platform reporting form costs nothing, no lawyer is required, and the template on this page covers the letter. Paid services charge for the labor around the letter, which is finding the copies, proving ownership, assembling evidence, and repeating all of it when listings return. For one copy, do it yourself with this page. When new copies keep appearing, that surrounding labor is the thing you would actually be paying for.
Can I use this template on Shopify, Amazon, or Etsy? +
The content transfers, the envelope changes. Marketplace and platform forms ask for the same six elements as separate fields, so fill their form field by field from this template rather than pasting the whole letter into a message box. The platform's own form is always the faster route when one exists, because it lands in the right queue without a human sorting it first.
Written August 2026. The statute is 17 U.S.C. § 512; figures above come from the sources named beside them and were checked in August 2026. Knockoff is not a law firm and this is general information, not legal advice.
