My competitor threatens to take a legal action

So I have been dropshipping for some time now, on my own website and on Etsy. 2 days ago I received an Instagram message from my main competitor ( a decent one, 300k followers etc) threatening me that he will take legal action against me because the images that I am using are "his LLC's" intellectual property under the American law!!.


However, all the images that I am using are the ones provided by my Chinese supplier. Furthermore, this supplier has uploaded those images to the web 7 months before my competitor). So basically me and my competitor have the same images of that supplier.


My question is, is it possible that my competitor acquired the property of those images under the US law even if they are not actually his images? What can he do in this case and what should I do given that my business is registered in France. ?

Thanks!!

I'd tell them to kick rocks until they actually do something, send an official letter, etc. Lots of times they are just bait.

Go to Tineye.com and do a reverse image search of one of the images to see if they appear all over the internet and if they have any intellectual rights to the images, there is a very high chance they are bullshiting you.

deShark said:

Go to Tineye.com and do a reverse image search of one of the images to see if they appear all over the internet and if they have any intellectual rights to the images, there is a very high chance they are bullshiting you.

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Great idea! I think that 95% of these cases are indeed bullshit.