Another day, another independent designer stolen from

The protests of ecommerce business owners and small designers that their work has been copied are becoming increasingly common.

In fact, some businesses are claiming that the rip-offs are produced so quickly and sold at such a low price that it could see their business go to the wall.

However, as the headlines prove, not even trademarks are providing complete protection against ecommerce giants.

Imitation game

In this past week alone, a Norfolk-based designer has been speaking to BBC News about her exhausting fight with Chinese ecommerce behemoth, Temu, to get them to take down imitations of her designs.

Louise Banham, who co-owns Rustic Warehouse Norfolk, has contacted the press after battling for months to get Temu to remove designs from its website that mirrored her own.

Banham said that she contacted Temu to notify them about each copy; but as soon as one was removed, another would appear from a different seller.

The imitation game is having a stark financial impact on many businesses. BBC News reported in January from a business in York, which claimed to have lost out on £100,000 of sales due to online design theft.

Big businesses, including fashion names, are also being impacted, claiming that fast fashion ecommerce ventures like Shein are ripping off their designs as soon as they appear online.

While Temu claimed to have “set up a specialised system dedicated to the protection of intellectual property (IP) rights and an associated reporting structure,” it seems the copying is happening faster than the policing.

Business owners add that there is also a loss of reputation to contend with. Some customers can come to the mistaken conclusion that the products being sold by UK makers are, in fact, made in China, imported and then given inflated price tags.

The importance of IP

Registering your intellectual property is a key way of getting some protection. Whether a trademark or patent, this must be done separately from registering your business.

The process can take around 3-4 months from application according to the government website.

Trademarks, which tend to be logos or symbols representing a company, are published in the UK Trade Marks Journal once passed. Patents, in contrast, are used to protect a business’ creations and offer the exclusive right to make, use, or sell that invention for a set period (usually around 20 years).

There are also copyrights, but these don’t need to be registered and protect original literature, artwork, music, photography, software code and even website content. These have also been the target of copying or harvesting outcries – with AI as the culprit.

What rights do you have?

While there are a host of legal wrangles ongoing against Temu, Shein, and their ilk, for most SMEs or makers, it is not good news.

Etsy has offered its sellers some protection by creating a filter that took down any products that were also listed on Temu. However, this has proved problematic with some genuine listings also being impacted.

The first recourse for UK businesses is to monitor the ecommerce sites or use a third-party service specialising in marketplace monitoring.

If a copycat product is spotted, the business owner must make a complaint to the platform and ask for the design to be taken down. However, as the news reports suggest, knock-off products are appearing as quickly as they are being taken down.

There are legal resources if this fails including cease-and-desist notices; but this is an expensive route to take. IP rights are also harder to enforce cross-border.

Instead, businesses need to be on top of registering their IP and meticulous in managing their manufacturing and distribution channels. Ultimately, the biggest protection is customer loyalty and their faith in the quality of products your business produces.