Using copyrighted images in affiliate product feeds

Product images are a key tool for affiliates but they can raise concerns about copyright. Do affiliates need permission from the copyright holder? What do you need to consider, and what do you do if there is a complaint?

Product feeds are an important tool for affiliates, making important product and pricing information available in a machine readable document. Merchants provide the URL of the image in the feed, and affiliates publish them on their website.

Most networks and platforms make the product image compulsory – merchants have to provide an image for every product in their product feed. However, while the merchant might have permission to use the images on their own website, but what about making them available for publishers to publish?

in 2025 those risks have actually increased. With AI scrapers, stricter copyright bots, brand-policing tools, and more organisations monitoring image misuse, it has never been more important to understand what images you can use, and what images you absolutely cannot.

It is probably fair to say a lot of e-commerce sites can’t say for sure if they have explicit permission to share every product image they list. Larger retailers with legal teams are probably more compliant, but the long tail of small to medium retailers may be less prepared.

In cases like these, it is possible that the manufacturer or official agent for a product may object to their product images being used without explicit permission. Affiliate professionals will no doubt think that is nonsense, but it can cause friction when other parties don’t understand the affiliate relationship. You can understand how it may be a bit alarming discovering images of your products being used all over the Internet without understanding the context.

It is rare for this to cause an issue but it does happen. There have even been instances where lawyers have contacted affiliates to get images removed or even to claim for damages.

Product images can originate from:

• A manufacturer
• A distributor
• An in-house photographer
• A PR agency
• A e-commerce team
• A marketplace listing scraped months ago
• Or an unknown third party

Each of these sources may have different licensing rights, and some may not have the right to redistribute at all. Today’s brand-protection bots will happily flag (or DMCA) an image even if it appears in the merchant’s own feed.

What do I need to consider?

Even if the merchant owns the right to display the image on their website, that doesn’t automatically grant:

• The affiliate network the right to store/cache it
• Affiliates the right to reuse it
• Google or Amazon the right to crawl/index it from your site
• You the right to include it in ads, social posts, or price-comparison listings

This was fuzzy for years, but now it is becoming more and more enforced due to AI training concerns and pressure from rights-holders.

‘Downstream usage’ permission is key

It is probably fair to say a lot of e-commerce sites can’t say for sure if they have explicit permission to share every product image they include in their product feed. While they may have permission to use the images on their own site, do they have permission to pass it downstream to other partners?

If the manufacturer or distributor doesn’t explicitly grant permission to share product images with partners, assume they haven’t granted it. Larger retailers with legal teams are probably more compliant, but the long tail of small to medium retailers may be less prepared.

I’m not going to recommend massive changes based on small risk, but have a quick think:

• Do you sell products from a supplier who is known to be over protective?
• Did any product images that you use on your own website come with any usage conditions?
• When you made your images did you just rip them off the Internet without really thinking about where they came from? (Be honest…)
• Did you blatantly steal your product images from a competitor?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” you might want to think about what the real risk is. In extreme circumstances consider changing the images you provide to affiliates.

AI image-scrapers changed everything

Ironically, AI is the cause of increased enforcement, and also powers the tools used to identify the culprits.

Brands now track their images globally because:

• AI training datasets are ingesting product photos
• Marketplaces (Temu/Shein and clones) routinely scrape and reuse images
• Counterfeiters are harder to distinguish
• Social ads amplify unauthorised use instantly
• Paid media bots regurgitate copyrighted content with impunity

Brands are far more aggressive issuing DMCA removals, automated takedown bots, and copyright monitoring. An affiliate innocently reusing a feed image may find themselves flagged alongside counterfeit operators because the AI bot doesn’t care who you are.

Network response

This was once a grey area, but most major networks (Awin, Impact, CJ, Partnerize) have updated their terms over the past few years to state:

• Affiliates are responsible for ensuring they have rights to all content
• Networks can remove or block images
• Images may not be redistributed without permission
• Networks are not liable for copyright disputes

If a merchant provides unclear or shaky image rights, the affiliate is the one legally exposed, not the network.

The ‘fair use’ argument

The armchair lawyers amongst us are probably screaming BUT ITS FAIR USE. It would be lovely if it was that easy.

Fair use is a copyright theory that permits for limited use of copyrighted content without consent. Eligibility is complicated and the laws vary by depending on the country, but generally ‘fair use’ applies to uses like commentary, critiques, news reporting, teaching, academic works, or research. The definition does not specifically include (or exclude) ‘for profit’ uses.

In some cases, the idea of fair use may be used as a legal defence to defend the use of copyrighted photographs, but it is certainly not a magic ‘get out of jail free’ card. If someone is contesting your use of certain images, it is likely that they have considered fair use and decided it does not apply.

It happened to me! What do I do?

I would love to give you a definitive course of action, but if someone does make legal threats then you need to seek some proper legal advice.

In most instances you should seek advice before you make an official response, but it shouldn’t count against you if you discretely contact your network or the brands affiliate representative for clarification. It could all be a misunderstanding and a quick chat could be all that is needed to make the problem go away.

If that doesn’t work the only advice I can give is to lawyer up. I would hate to make things worse by telling you to do the wrong thing.

One thing to note – once a brand empowers a copyright protection agency to act on their behalf, they may not have any say in who they persue or take action against. Once the wheels are rolling it might not be possible to get off the train.

Remove the image

It goes without saying that you should remove the contentious images from your feed / site immediately. Bear in mind that some affiliates “cache” or copy product images to their own server so you might need to reach out to your publishers to eradicate them completely. It may be more effective to completely remove the entire product (not just the images) from your feed.

You should also ask your web or SEO team to exclude the offending images from tools like Google Image Search (usually done by editing your robots.txt file).

Remove from Google image search

It is likely that anyone searching for copyrighted images will use search tools like Google, so if it isn’t visible you are less likely to be at risk.

If Google Image Search isn’t a core part of your SEO strategy you should consider excluding all product images from Google Images as a preventative step.

In an ideal world…

If everyone took these steps all parties would be protected to some degree.

Networks / feed providers:

• Ask advertisers if their images are signed off before they launch the feed.
• Place responsibility (but not liability) for checking suitability of product images on the merchant.

Retailers:

• Take responsibility for the images (and other information) in your feed.
• Take reasonable steps to check the product images on site and in the product feed are safe.
• Add a statement to the T&Cs and privacy policy making no claim over copyright of any third party images.

Affiliates:

• Double check when you aren’t sure – especially for manufacturers who are known to be unreasonable/fussy (Apple).
• Add a statement to the T&Cs and privacy policy making no claim over copyright of any third party images.