Are keywords trademarked?
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You were, no doubt, watching a video about getting rich quick by selling on Merch By Amazon. They have approval bots that scan your title and description for trademarked terms. Since MBA is the seller of record and manufacturer, they play it safe and fail anything that might leave them liable. To have a human evaluate every listing made to MBA would suck too much payroll and crash the business model, so it is Rejection By Bot, which cannot deal with subtlety.
Outside of MBA, this will not be an issue.
Outside of MBA, this will not be an issue.
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MBA was supposed to be for game companies and bands, and such, to sell Merch about their game brand or band. So Amazon set it up with an eye toward ensuring that no one was trying to pass themselves off as some brand/entity that they were not. Regardless of what is on the actual shirt, if the text of your listing mentions something that turns up in the TM database, the bots fail the listing.
I mentioned SpaceX in the sales blather for a design that had nothing to do with SpaceX, other than being about space exploration. I wasn't even thinking in terms of SpaceX being a desirable keyword, just mentioned it (and NASA) by way of blather about the past and future of space exploration. Bots failed it. Any human (that didn't work for MBA) wouldn't be confused as to whether I was pretending to be SpaceX, and would clearly see that I was not selling SpaceX merch. I redid the listing without the word "SpaceX" and was bot approved. People even bought the shirt, yeah me
I understand perfectly well that many (the majority?) of shirts sold online are parasites on the IP of others, but I think MBA is the only platform where they disapprove your listing (or account) for clearly incidental or accidental use of trademarked words and phrases in the text of the listing. So, yes, people like the OP are right to be concerned, as being careless about this can cost you the opportunity to play on MBA. If they are not talking about MBA, I would like to hear the context.
While not automated, Etsy is doing something similar, they will remove a listing if a copyright owner claims infringement. We had a listing get remove for a 'Spirit Jersey' since a company claims to own the copyright to it. They complained not only about the product name but also the use of the keyword...
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After the IP owner (or an IP enforcement firm acting on their behalf) filed a takedown request with Etsy. Etsy on its own pays no attention (I'm not encouraging IP abuse, just pointing out that Etsy operates the way other online marketplaces do, as opposed to the way MBA operates).
My use of "SpaceX" just in the text of the listing probably wouldn't have been a problem on Etsy (I have 3 Etsy shops), as SpaceX isn't a clothing brand, and the design had nothing to do with SpaceX.
"Spirit Jersey," or any other similar imprinted clothing brand, would be a bad name to drop in a listing that is selling imprinted clothing, as that could cause confusion for buyers as to whether they are buying an actual "Spirit Jersey" brand product, which is pretty much the definition of IP infringement.
The OPs question stemmed from a video. There is practical nothing on YouTube these days besides Get Rich Selling On Merch videos
The word "spirit" has been in common use meaning team spirit for a long time, especially relating to cheerleading. We used to have "spirit rallies" in high school many, many, decades even, years ago. I would think a case could be made that lower case "spirit jersey" or "spirit sweater" doesn't infringe Spirit Clothing Company's copyright. Of course one would need the will and deep pockets to fight them in court.
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