If I don’t file a counter-notice and simply remove the product immediately every time I receive a copyright infringement notice, can my store still be suspended?
Your store can be shut down and your account terminated at Shopify’s discretion, as outlined in the Terms. So if you are infringing, you should stop and remove the products/content before the complaint, not after. The removal after the fact doesn’t necessarily erase the complaint history. Repeatedly waiting until someone files a formal complaint before removing potentially infringing content is also not a good business strategy.
@as1515 Short answer, no. Taking the product down does not clear the complaint off your record.
Shopifys copyright policy spells this out. It says that when you submit a valid counter notice, they remove the complaint from your account record. Thats the only route it describes for a complaint coming off. If you just agree and remove the content, it says no further action is necessary and the content stays offline, but nothing there says the complaint goes away. So quietly complying protects the content situation, not your record:
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/compliance/intellectual-property/copyright-policy
On the how many part, theres no published number and there wont be. Shopify says it terminates stores for repeat infringement in appropriate circumstances, and that it keeps the discretion to disable a store for even a single instance of wilful or egregious infringement. So the honest answer to how many is that it could be one, depending what it was.
One more thing from the same page worth knowing before anyone suggests it. If a store is terminated for repeat infringement, all other shops owned or operated by the same person are subject to termination too. Starting fresh under a new store name is not the escape hatch people assume it is.
The bit I would actually focus on is your wording, every time I receive one. That pattern is the risk, more than any single notice. If theyre arriving regularly, something upstream is generating them and its usually one of two things. Supplier or dropship images copied straight into your listings, or brand names sitting in your titles, tags and descriptions.
Worth going through your catalogue now and finding those yourself rather than waiting for the next notice. Compliance after the fact is the thing that builds the record. Removing the cause is the thing that stops it.
Also worth checking which type of notice you actually have, since copyright and trademark complaints arrive looking similar but run on different processes, and only copyright has the counter notice route.
Hello @as1515
Yes, removing a product may assist in correcting the particular violation, but it does not ensure that the store will not be subjected to further action. There is no easy public threshold at which a certain number of notices means suspension or termination. While repeated or severe infringement may affect the store still. Log each notice, remove the content reported immediately, and scan your catalog for similar material so you’re not getting multiple notices for related items.