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Product Picture Thumbnails – Trademark Use or Something Else?

November 30, 2015 by Amy Sullivan Cahill ·

There is no effective way to describe to someone who does not use social media or shop online the ways in which the information delivery systems differ from what they know. This is because the entire platform interacts with the human data intake system differently. It is like visiting another country and having to peel back your own basic operating system to understand what is going on around you.
One way in which consumers are presented with brand assets online is through the use of product image thumbnails. A thumbnail is simply a scaled down picture.
Why are thumbnails used online to advertise goods? For one, because the real estate on the page is likely to be shared with a number of other products – sometimes directly competing products. Thumbnail images are searchable and download more quickly than full size images. Courts have held that third-parties (including search engines) can create thumbnail images of full size images from your web site to create indexes without violating copyright laws.
Product thumbnail details are hard to see. Consumers may rely on text descriptions to gather information about products displayed in thumbnail images, making the “small print” important. Or they may simply take on faith that the product image is a fair representation of the product.
But displaying thumbnail images can get questionable sellers around the problem of having to represent clearly the source or condition of the product. In the event of counterfeit products, the seller does not even need a good quality fake. All he or she needs a good quality thumbnail image.
Does this Amazon seller really offer Masterbuilt brand turkey fryers? All we know for sure is he has a good product thumbnail.

Product thumbnails are easy to move and to copy.  Once a seller places a thumbnail on the web it is susceptible to movement.  This makes thumbnail images different than traditional product images, such as images contained in mail order catalogs or other “print” media. 

In the example above, the product image is used to sell not only the listed product as offered by the seller but also 87 other new products from other sources as well as one used product (do you think a used turkey fryer looks as good as the one pictured above?). 

But would we rather not have product image thumbnails?  Of course not.  Thumbnails impart information efficiently to consumers shopping for goods on the web.  But trademark owners should take special care in what type of brand assets they include for online consumption, by for example including a watermark on the image or using other technologies that deter unauthorized use of product images by third-parties.

Happy Thanksgiving.     

Filed Under: Uncategorized · Tagged With: product image trademark, product images, thumbnail images, thumbnail images trademark, trademark, trademarks

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