Marketplace listings
Who owns product photos on Amazon? What sellers grant
Updated
Listing a product does not hand the photos to the marketplace, but it does grant a licence, and on two of the largest it outlives the listing. Here is what Amazon, eBay and Etsy say in their own agreements.
Amazon takes a licence for as long as your rights last
Section 4.1 of the Business Solutions Agreement grants Amazon "a royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide right and license for the duration of your original and derivative intellectual property rights to use any and all of Your Materials for the Services or other Amazon product or service". Your Materials is defined to include content and product information.
Source: Amazon, Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement
eBay's licence is perpetual and its catalogue is shared
eBay's User Agreement says that content you provide grants eBay a "non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right" to exercise your intellectual property rights in it in connection with its services.
Source: eBay, User Agreement
Its images policy adds that your content "may be added to the eBay product catalog, and may be used by other sellers in their eBay listings."
Source: eBay, Images, videos and text policy
Etsy disclaims ownership but keeps a licence
Etsy's Terms of Use say "We don't claim any ownership to Your Content, but we have your permission to use it to help Etsy function and grow."
Source: Etsy, Terms of Use
What that means before you license a catalogue
None of these licences mentions AI training, and none transfers ownership, so a brand can usually still license its own originals. A buyer will want to know which images went to which marketplace, because an exclusive licence for AI cannot promise what a marketplace's earlier licence already allows. The full board of platforms, marketplaces included, is on our catalogue terms page.
Source: Catalogue platform terms