Royal Canadian Legion making headway combatting poppy trademark violations

The Royal Canadian Legion is cracking down on trademark-violating poppy products sold on e-commerce platforms like Amazon. Nujma Bond, the organization's national spokesperson, said violating the poppy trademark by selling products — such as souvenir pins, clothing and other items for profit on platforms — is a long-standing issue. She said the growth of these platforms has made the issue more pervasive and that it's important for people to know the legion has a trademark on the poppy image to ensure it's used respectfully and for remembrance. 

"Because ultimately it also is the poppy that people are familiar with during the National Poppy Campaign," she said. "When funds are raised that way through the use of the image of the poppy and the lapel poppy that people are so used to, those funds go directly into helping support our veterans," Bond said. 

Poppy trademark violations is one item that came up at the the 49th Royal Canadian Legion Dominion Convention, which was held at Saint John's TD Station this week. A "reports and resolutions" package prepared for the convention states that over the past three years, Dominion Command, the legion's national headquarters, has received access to intellectual property reporting portals for Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Meta (Facebook Marketplace and Instagram) and that this has improved Dominion Command's ability to report infringements. Bond adds that the legion was granted "privileges" to directly remove violating products from these platforms, which has made it much easier to combat the issue. "[The platforms] worked so closely with us that we now have the ability to actually go in and take down merchandise that is not compliant, that is in violation of our trademark," she said.

She said previous processes were more arduous, with the legion having to write to the platforms and then having to wait while investigations were carried out.  According Berkley Lawrence, the newly elected president of the national headquarters, the convention was attended by 850 delegates, 100 observers and 20 to 30 guest speakers.  The convention is held every two years to ratify changes made since the last convention and to discuss the future of the legion. 

The poppy is a trademarked and protected symbol through an act of Parliament in 1948, to keep it from being used for commercial or political purposes, according to the legion's website. The trademark prevents the lapel poppy that most are familiar with, the poppy logo, symbols and the flower to be used on consumer products such as clothing, art, or other products by any organization or individual without permission from the Dominion Command Poppy and Remembrance Committee. If granted, all proceeds from any sales would go to the legion poppy trust fund. In 2023, 12,310 listings were removed from Amazon due to trademark violations, according to the legion report. In the same year, Bond said 487 violations were found on Etsy, 39 on eBay and 40 on Meta platforms.

CBC News contacted Etsy, eBay, Amazon and Meta for comment.  Meta declined the request for an interview and responded with links to the company's intellectual property and copyright policy pages.  Amazon spokesperson Octavia Roufogalis said in a statement that the platform has onboarded the Royal Canadian Legion as an "approved seller" and that they "are implementing new controls to restrict the sale of infringing poppy products by other sellers ahead of Remembrance Day."  EBay spokesperson, Scott Overland, said in a statement that the platform prohibits the sale of counterfeit items through the use of "multiple layers of AI technology, professionally trained eBay investigators, and buyer protection programs."

Overland's statement said eBay has a "Verified Rights Owner Program" that registers intellectual property rights owners and allows them to report potentially counterfeit or IP-infringing listings, which eBay says it removes.  Etsy provided no response.  Bond said there are still challenges ahead.  "There are always online retailers that can pop up anywhere in the world and sometimes they're on other websites that are not hosted by the third parties that I've mentioned already," she said.  "And so it will continue to be a bit of a battle, but we certainly have been receiving a really good boost in terms of combating this problem."