UPDATE: Ok, I found out what probably caused the problem (thanks to Kelly Light on Twitter, Christine in my blog comments & Patricia Storms on Facebook) — Warner Bros must own the name/phrase “Harry Potter” and are protecting their trademark. — Debbie
So I’ve had a Zazzle store with some of my cartoons on cards and t-shirts for a while. I don’t tend to publicize my Inkygirl Gifts For Writers shop much because I don’t keep it updated with new material — I’m too busy with my illustration and writing.
Today, however, I received the following letter from Zazzle:
Dear inkygirl,
Thank you for your interest in Zazzle.com, and thank you for publishing products on Zazzle.
Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Four Things You Should Never Say To A Writer, contains content that is not suitable for printing at Zazzle.com.
We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.
Please help us make our content approval process better by taking this short survey.
The details of the product being removed are listed below:
• Product Title: Four Things You Should Never Say To A Writer
• Product Type: Shirt
• Product ID: 235977150042632245
• Result: Not Approved
• Policy Violations:
o Your product has been removed from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to an infringement claim by Warner Bros. This may be due to the actual design of the product, description or search tags that references properties owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
• Image: ImageWe apologize for the inconvenience, a detailed description of the policies are located here.
If you have any questions or concerns about the review of your product, please emailcontent_review@zazzle.com
Best Regards,
Content Review Team
Zazzle Inc.
You can see the t-shirt design image at the top of this post. I assure you all that *I* came up with it all by myself, based on real life experience (though slightly exaggerated in some cases :-)).
The image link in the Zazzle letter did NOT match the name of the product title, but referred to another of my t-shirt designs:
Now, I’m assuming that Warner Bros ISN’T claiming that they own the phrase “I write.”
I’ve written to Zazzle to find out more info.
Have to say, though, that I’m not crazy about the fact that they took down my “4 Things To Never Say To A Writer” t-shirt (it’s gone from the store already) without asking me about it first.