Free Checklist

Trademark Check Checklist

WHY I MADE THIS

My listing went live — Month 0
Trademark registered — Month 18
My shop — Permanently closed
That registration today — Cancelled by a court

The phrase wasn't registered when I used it. It was filed a year and a half later — and Etsy never checked the dates. I had to.

One claim is enough. That's the whole problem.

Most sellers have never checked a phrase before putting it in a title — not because they're careless, but because nobody told them it was a thing.

Etsy doesn't investigate first
A claim comes in and the listing comes down. Your sales history doesn't get a vote.

There's no counter-notice
Unlike a copyright claim, a trademark claim on Etsy gives you no formal way to respond.

Clear today isn't clear forever
A phrase anyone can use right now can belong to someone else nine months from now.

What's in the checklist:

Three pages. Print it, or duplicate it for every phrase you check.

PAGE 01 — The ten-minute search
Six steps through the trademark database, with space to write down what you find — including the date fields almost everyone skips.

PAGE 02 — If you find a live mark
Three questions to work through, then exactly what to remove and where to look. Most sellers pull the phrase from the title and leave it in five other places.

PAGE 03 — Your re-check schedule
Checking once isn't enough — my shop is the proof. A simple schedule and a log so you catch a new registration before a takedown does.

Who's handing you this:

I'm Courtney. I built an Etsy shop from zero to almost a million dollars in sales over four years — around forty thousand orders and seven thousand reviews.

Then it was permanently closed. Two claims did it: a copyright claim from a competitor that I had no way to fight because of where he was located, and a trademark claim on a phrase that wasn't even registered when I created the listing.

A court has since cancelled that registration. It should never have been granted. But by then my shop had been gone for months, and no part of that process ever asked for my side.

This is the check I run now, written out so you don't have to learn it the way I did.

SUCCESS LEAVES CLUES

Before you download it:

Is this legal advice?
No. I'm a seller, not a lawyer. This is the research process I use. If you find a real conflict on a product that's making you money, that's a conversation to have with an attorney.

Does it cost anything to run the search?
No. The database is free and you don't need an account. The checklist is free too.

Does this work outside the United States?
The process is the same, but the database it points to covers US registrations. If you sell into the US market, that's the one that matters most.

I already got a claim. Is this still useful?
Yes. Page one teaches you to read a trademark record, which is how I eventually worked out that the claim against me didn't hold up.