"The ideal time to catch potential copyright violations is before the product goes up for sale. So, perhaps what might help is to create a forum in which the store staff posts the promotional pictures that are submitted with a product, and then the marketplace vendors can see the promo renders before the item goes into the store."

I would campaign against that actually. Already people feel the need to keep ideas under their hat till they're released. It's not easy to find someone working on the same idea at the same time even though repetition in any market is inevitable. And not necessarily bad. Cake1's Real Eyes came out a while back and now several have used that idea. Variety is good so long as the timing is right or the merchants agree. And I'm not even going to go into the fact that it is possible for two or more people to have the same idea. I have a pose I did from a reference photo and bought a pose package with a pose so similar they had to have used the same reference. I'm certainly not going to scrap mine because of it. I think such a forum would open up more arguements than it would quell.

However, look at the ratio of copyright violators to legit artists in the marketplace. A small handful of violators don't warrant treating the rest like children.

...... Kendra