Guide

How to report Etsy shops that copied your listings

Report copies on Etsy through its Reporting Portal, one report for each original design. Add the design once as a property, then add every listing that copies it, from any shop, by search or by pasting listing URLs into Upload multiple listings. Etsy's help center says a notice that gives shop names instead may not be processed.

Written October 3, 2026

The short version

Etsy's portal ties each report to one property, and its listing search covers all of Etsy. Twenty shops selling three of your prints can be three reports.
Paste listing URLs or IDs into Upload multiple listings. The listing ID is the number in the listing's URL.
Etsy's help center says a notice may not be processed when it gives shop names instead of listing URLs, or links the copier's listing as the example of your work.
Shop names and usernames go on a different Etsy form, which does not take listings.
An intellectual property report can give every seller you report your name and email address. A Report this item flag is confidential.
A seller can answer a US copyright report with a counter notice, and the listing can return 10 business days after Etsy processes it unless you sue or file a Copyright Claims Board claim. The Board cannot hear a claim against a seller who lives outside the United States.

One print seller found "AT LEAST 20 (that's only what I found) shops selling literally exactly the same prints" after a "make money online" creator featured their best seller, one of them with over 2,000 sales. "There are thousands of listings to report." Two digital download sellers posted the same week: one shop copied each new release, and two new shops relisted the same download.¹¹

Group the copies by design

Etsy's Reporting Portal starts from your design. You register for the portal, add an intellectual property, and create a report, in that order.¹ Each report starts with one choice, "the property that this report covers". Then you add listings, and the search that finds them "searches all of Etsy". Etsy also offers Upload multiple listings, which takes listing IDs or URLs in one paste.¹

Etsy's search covers all of Etsy and its upload takes any listing URL, so one report can hold copies from many shops. Count your copied designs to estimate your number of reports. A print copied by twenty shops can be one report with twenty listings in it. Three prints copied across those shops can be three reports. Etsy publishes no limit on how many listings one report can carry.

Report 1: print: Fern

3 copied listings from Shop A, Shop B, and Shop D.

Report 2: print: Moth

4 copied listings from Shop A, Shop C, Shop E, and Shop F.

Report 3: download: Planner

2 copied listings from Shop B and Shop F.

Grouping by design also keeps each report clean. A report names one property, so every listing in it should copy that property. A shop that copied your print and your planner appears in both reports, once for each.

Find every copy first

Build the list before the first report. A report with five of the twenty copies leaves fifteen shops selling, and each of the five sellers you reported can learn who you are from the report. After that first sweep, report new copies as they appear.

Search Etsy with your own words. A copier who will "simply rip my listings", as the print seller put it, carries your words over with the listing. Search your exact titles and your most specific tags.¹¹
Search by image. Run each product photo through Google Lens to catch copies Etsy's text search misses.
Use the portal's own search. Inside a report, the listing search covers all of Etsy, so a last pass there catches listings that went up while you were building the list.¹

Keep one row per copied listing: the listing URL, the listing ID (the number in that URL), the shop name, which of your designs it copies, the date you found it, and a screenshot. The design column is the one that turns into reports. The screenshot matters because a seller can edit or delete a listing after you report it, and your record should show what it looked like.

Copies are not always pixel copies. The print seller found that watermarks fail because "AI very easily deletes them", and other sellers on the same thread described copies with AI-regenerated photos.¹¹ A regenerated photo of your print still shows your print. Report the listing for the artwork it reproduces, and say so in the description of your property rather than relying on the photo match.

File the report, step by step

Etsy recommends contacting the seller first and reporting if you cannot reach an agreement.¹ With twenty copiers, a message gives each of them warning before the report lands, and the digital seller who messaged their copier got no reply.¹¹ Decide that per shop. The steps are the same either way.

1. List every copy. One row per copied listing, with its URL and the design it copies. Finding every copy covers Etsy search, Google Lens and the portal's own search.
2. Choose copyright or trademark. Copyright covers your product photos, artwork, prints, listing text and digital files, and the elements US law requires in a takedown notice do not include a registration.⁸ Trademark covers your brand name or logo, and Etsy says it may not process a trademark report when "you only have a trademark application but your trademark has not yet been registered".³ A shop copying your prints is a copyright report. Which right covers which part of your catalog sorts the edge cases. Write the right next to each design on your list.
3. Register for the portal. Open Etsy's Reporting Portal. Etsy asks a seller reporting their own work to "sign in with your shop's account", and allows a separate Etsy account if you would rather report from a different email. Choose who owns the rights and add your details. The portal is in US English only "but is accessible anywhere in the world".¹ Once registered, you see the Intellectual Properties and Reports tabs.
4. Add each copied design as a property. In the Intellectual Properties tab, add one property per design. Etsy asks for the type, the owner and the name or title of the property, plus, where it applies, "a URL to a website that shows the property in use".¹ Give your own listing or your own site there, never the copy.
5. Create one report per design. In the Reports tab, choose Create a report, pick the owner and the one property the report covers, then Create & add listings.¹ Name the report after the design so you can find it later.
6. Add every copying listing. Choose Upload multiple listings and paste the listing URLs or IDs from your list for that design, whichever shops they belong to. Use the search for anything new.¹
7. Submit and track it. Choose Review & submit, then Submit report. Etsy sends an email confirmation and later "an email notification with the outcome of your report". The Reports tab has a Status column, and View report shows the outcome, "including any removed listings".¹ Repeat steps 5 to 7 for the next design.

A representative can file the report with a letter of authorization. Etsy asks a representative to upload a letter of authorization with the property and says it will "verify it quickly", and you can draft the report while it does.¹ If you cannot use the portal at all, Etsy points to its written notice requirements and its designated agent instead, and a copyright notice with every required element marked covers what goes in one.²

What gets a report rejected

Etsy says it rejected 18% of submitted intellectual property reports in 2025.⁷ Its help center lists the reasons it may be unable to process a notice, and four of them hit sellers reporting copycat shops.³

Shop names instead of listing URLs. Etsy's words: "we need each listing's URL, not the username or shop name." This is the reason the row-per-listing list exists. A report that says "everything in this shop" gives Etsy nothing to remove.
The copy given as the example of your work. When the form asks for examples of your work, Etsy says "you must provide links or a description of your own work, not the allegedly infringing seller's material."
The wrong right. Etsy may not process a report that misidentifies "the type of intellectual property right claimed". A copied print reported as a trademark problem fails here.
A trademark that is not registered. A pending application or a dead registration can stop a trademark report, and for a mark on the supplemental register Etsy asks for more information showing the term is distinctive. Copyright has no such gate.

A rejection is not the end of that report. Etsy says that if none of its listed reasons applies, you can add documentation "by replying to the rejection email you received".³ When a report comes back with no reason you can act on, what each dead end after a report means walks through the next move for each answer.

Shop names and repeat copiers

The portal is for listings. A shop name or username that uses your brand, or a video on a shop page, goes on Etsy's separate Reporting Form, and that form says it "can't be used to report listings".²⁶ A shop that copied your listings and also took a name close to yours needs two filings. Report the listings through the portal and the name through the form.

There is no button that closes a copycat shop. Etsy says it "terminates selling privileges of members who are subject to repeat or multiple notices of intellectual property infringement in appropriate circumstances and at Etsy's discretion", and that this reaches "any accounts we believe are associated with or operated by the affected member".² Etsy's 2025 report counts approximately 28,000 shops closed "for repeat infringement and/or counterfeiting".⁷ It publishes no strike count. The part you control is the record, so report every copy by listing, each time it appears.

Digital downloads and copiers who wait for your next release

One digital seller described a shop "copying all my digital items… And they wait until I release more to copy said items."¹¹ A digital file is your work under copyright like a print is, and the same portal takes the report. Keep the property for each download, and when a new copy appears, add a new report under that property rather than waiting to collect a batch.

Etsy's own listing rules give you a second, quieter route. Its Creativity Standards allow digital downloads of "sellers' original designs" and name "a bundle, collection, scan, or PDF of someone else's work" as a listing that does not qualify.⁵ A reseller of your file is breaking that rule, which is a policy matter rather than an intellectual property one. Report this item to Etsy and Report this shop to Etsy carry policy flags, and Etsy says "the reported member won't know who reported them". It also asks you not to "flag a single violation multiple times".⁴ A policy flag carries none of the legal weight of an infringement report, and Etsy decides what to do with it, so use it beside the portal report, not instead of it.

After you report

Etsy does not weigh your work against the copy. Its policy says it is not "in a position to offer legal advice or make legal determinations" and "will remove material cited for alleged intellectual property infringement when provided with a report that complies with our policies".² A complete report gets the listings down. Three things follow it.

The sellers can learn who you are

Etsy "may also provide a copy of the infringement report, including the name and email address of the reporting party, to the affected member."² With twenty shops, that can be twenty sellers holding your email. The digital seller who reported five copies posted what came next: "they had the audacity to report my own work back at me so I had five of my listing removed."¹¹ Report from an email you are willing to share, keep your creation files ready, and if a retaliatory report lands on your shop, getting a deactivated listing back as the maker covers the counter notice and the appeal.

A counter notice can put the copy back

A seller you report for copyright can answer with a counter notice. Etsy takes counter notices "for US-based copyright infringement reports only", and says the material may be restored "10 business days after the counter notice is processed" unless the copyright owner files a court action "or a qualifying action with the Copyright Claims Board".² The statute sets the window at "not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days".⁸ Sellers filed counter notices on 10% of copyright reports in 2025, by Etsy's count.⁷

Living abroad does not stop a seller from sending one. 17 U.S.C. 512(g)(3)(D) gives a seller outside the United States its own consent clause, for "any judicial district in which the service provider may be found".⁸ The print seller hit exactly this: "One of the sellers who I filed a notice simply filed a counter notice and Etsy left them alone".¹¹

Your three answers to a counter notice are a federal lawsuit, a Copyright Claims Board claim, or letting the listing return. The Board is the cheap one: $100 in filing fees across two payments, and claims up to $30,000 in total.⁹ Its rules close that door on a seller abroad. "The CCB cannot hear claims against respondents who reside outside of the United States".⁹ Against a seller abroad, only a federal lawsuit is left. What a Board claim costs and how it runs has the stages for a seller in the United States.

Withdrawing, and false reports

If a seller turns out to be licensed or you reported a listing by mistake, Etsy takes a withdrawal only "directly from the intellectual property owner or authorized representative who submitted the claim".² Get the list right before you file, because the law reaches the reporter too. Under 17 U.S.C. 512(f), anyone who "knowingly materially misrepresents" that material is infringing is liable for the damages, costs and attorney's fees that follow.⁸ Etsy also says it may reject reports "submitted in bad faith".²

What we do not solve

Five parts of a copycat problem on Etsy have no clean answer.

A similar design is not a copy. Copyright does not protect "any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery", and familiar symbols and designs cannot be registered.¹⁰ A shop that made its own print in your style has copied nothing you can report. Report the listings that reproduce your actual work.
A seller abroad who counter-notices is hard to stop. The Board cannot hear the claim, which leaves a federal lawsuit. The print seller ruled that out because the copiers "are all in different countries".¹¹
Nobody knows how many reports close a shop. Etsy terminates at its discretion and publishes no number.
You cannot fence copiers out. A digital seller asked the same week whether they could stop certain countries from seeing their shop. Other sellers answered that it is not possible for digital items, and that a copier "could just see your shop from another browser".¹¹
Etsy is one marketplace. Copies of a design that sells on Etsy tend to turn up on other platforms too. Where a SHEIN or Temu report goes covers the two that come up most in the same threads.

Where Knockoff fits

Knockoff is what we build, so read this knowing that. Finding the copies and filing the reports is the part of this page that repeats every time you release something. Knockoff connects a Shopify store with the domain alone and watches that catalog's product photos across marketplaces including Etsy, Amazon, Temu, eBay, Walmart, AliExpress and the open web. A match counts only when your photo turns up in the seller's own listing gallery.

You sign one letter of authorization, and Knockoff files the copyright report through Etsy's Reporting Portal as your authorized agent. Etsy reviews that letter for each rights owner before the first report goes through. To see what turns up for your own products, check your catalog for stolen photos.

Knockoff connects to Shopify stores today, one store per company, so a seller who sells only on Etsy is not a customer of ours. Nobody in this category controls what a marketplace decides, and we guarantee nothing about the outcome of a report. One plan, $799 a month, priced in the open, monthly, with no contract.

Questions

How do I report an Etsy shop for copying my listings? +

Use Etsy's Reporting Portal at etsy.com/ipreporting, signed in with your shop account. Add each original design once as a property, then create one report per design and add every listing that copies it, from any shop, by search or by pasting listing URLs or IDs into Upload multiple listings. Etsy acts on listing URLs, and its help center says a notice that gives shop names instead of listing URLs may not be processed. A shop name that copies your brand goes on Etsy's separate Reporting Form.

Does Etsy tell the seller who reported them? +

On an intellectual property report it can. Etsy's policy says it may give the reported member a copy of the report, including the name and email address of the reporting party. A report through the Report this item or Report this shop button is different: Etsy says that process is confidential and the reported member won't know who reported them.

What happens after you report a shop to Etsy? +

On an intellectual property report that meets Etsy's requirements, Etsy removes the listings and contacts the seller. You get an email confirming the report and a second email with the outcome, and the portal's Reports tab shows which listings came down. On a US copyright report the seller can file a counter notice, and the listing can come back 10 business days after Etsy processes it unless you file a court action or a qualifying Copyright Claims Board claim.

What should I do if someone copies my design on Etsy? +

Collect the URL of every copied listing first, then report them by design through Etsy's Reporting Portal. Copyright covers your photos, artwork, prints, listing text and digital files, and the elements US law requires in a takedown notice do not include a registration. A trademark report needs an active registered trademark; Etsy says it may not process one based on an application alone. A similar idea or style is not a copy, so report the listings that reproduce your actual work.

Can you copy someone's Etsy listing? +

Not their photos, artwork or wording. Those are the seller's copyright, and Etsy's own Creativity Standards require listings for items made by a seller to use original photo or video content of the final product. Making your own version of a general idea is a different matter, because copyright does not protect ideas, only the way someone expressed one.

Can I report many Etsy listings in one report? +

Yes. Etsy's portal has an Upload multiple listings option that takes listing IDs or URLs, and its listing search covers all of Etsy. Each report covers one property, and Etsy's search and upload take listings from any shop, so a print copied by twenty shops can go in one report and three copied prints need three. Etsy publishes no limit on the number of listings in a report.

Can I report an Etsy seller outside the US? +

Yes. Etsy's reporting portal is open to rights owners anywhere, and nothing in Etsy's intellectual property policy limits a report by where the reported seller lives. A seller abroad can still file a counter notice, because US law gives them their own consent clause. What a seller abroad does change is your options after that: the Copyright Claims Board cannot hear a claim against a respondent who lives outside the United States.

Cite this page

Knockoff. "How to report Etsy shops that copied your listings." Published October 3, 2026. https://knockoff.co/guides/etsy-shop-copied-my-listings

Sources and dates

Every source was read on October 3, 2026, unless a line says otherwise.

1. Etsy, How to Report Intellectual Property Infringement. help.etsy.com. Portal registration, adding a property, the report steps including Upload multiple listings, the status and outcome emails, and the letter of authorization for representatives. ↩
2. Etsy, Intellectual Property Policy. etsy.com/legal/ip. Sections on reporting, counter notices, repeat infringement and withdrawals. The written notice requirements for email and post are at etsy.com/legal/ip-dmca. ↩
3. Etsy, Why Was My Notice of Infringement Rejected? help.etsy.com. ↩
4. Etsy, How to Report an Item or Shop. help.etsy.com. The policy flag route and its confidentiality. ↩
5. Etsy, Creativity Standards. etsy.com/legal/creativity, updated June 10, 2025. ↩
6. Etsy, Reporting Form. etsy.com/legal/ip/report. For usernames, shop names and shop videos. ↩
7. Etsy, 2025 Transparency Report. PDF, covering January to December 2025, read September 21, 2026. Around 111,000 alleged infringement reports processed, 18% of submitted reports rejected, approximately 28,000 shops closed "for repeat infringement and/or counterfeiting", and counter notices on 10% of copyright reports. ↩
8. 17 U.S.C. 512. Cornell Legal Information Institute. Subsections (f) on misrepresentation, (g)(2)(C) on the restore window and (g)(3)(D) on the counter notice consent clause. ↩
9. Copyright Claims Board. Fees ($40 first payment, $60 second), the $30,000 limit, and respondents outside the United States, which rests on 17 U.S.C. 1504(d)(4). ↩
10. US Copyright Office, Circular 33, Works Not Protected by Copyright. copyright.gov. ↩
11. Seller threads, r/EtsySellers. The print seller with 20 copycat shops (September 30, 2026), the digital seller whose copier reported back (October 1, 2026), and the digital seller who asked about blocking countries (September 30, 2026). Individual accounts, not a sample. ↩

Knockoff sells brand protection software and is not a neutral party. Knockoff is not a law firm and this page is general information, not legal advice. Policies and forms change without notice, so read the source before you rely on a line here.

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