Online shopping giant Temu has agreed to work with the greeting card industry to remove copied designs from its site more quickly.
Card firms say hundreds of their copyrighted images have been used to create cheap rip-offs, costing them thousands of pounds in lost sales.
Designers told the BBC the process for getting the plagiarised listings removed has been like the fairground game 'whack-a-mole' with copied products re-appearing within days.
Temu said protecting intellectual property was a top priority and that it was encouraging sellers to join the trial of a new takedown process specifically for the greetings card industry.
Amanda Mountain, the co-founder of York-based Lola Design, discovered the catalogue of designs she had built up over a decade had nearly all been copied.
Amanda's estimates suggest that fraudulent versions of their products have made online sellers £100,000 in sales, equivalent to about 13% of Lola Design's annual turnover. Every piece that I create is actually a piece of me, she said.
Temu's newly implemented bespoke takedown process will allow card firms to submit a single link for the removal of multiple listings, thus streamlining the process.
According to the Greeting Card Association (GCA), the trial will enable faster identification and removal of counterfeit designs, minimizing the disruption for original creators. This trial marks an important development as Temu looks to enhance trust with brands and revamp its approach to intellectual property.
As Amanda Fergusson, the chief executive of the GCA, notes, the collaboration with Temu is a significant first step to combatting the issues of copycat sellers and protecting the integrity of original designs.
