According to the Strait Network on December 14, Temu sued SHEIN again in the United States. According to relevant sources, Temu sued SHEIN because the other party's behavior has escalated again recently, starting to illegally detain merchants, forcibly ask for mobile phones, steal trade secrets, and abuse the U.S. legal system to disrupt the market.
It is worth noting that Temu also sued SHEIN for making false statements to the copyright registration agency, and launched tens of thousands of false and malicious complaints in the United States that were not supported by real copyrights, and the number of complaints about SHEIN alone is 17 times.
You must know that in the past few years, it has become the norm for SHEIN to be mired in infringement lawsuits, and global brands include ZARA, H&M, UGG, LEVI STRAUSS, trendy brands Stussy, Oakley sunglasses, Tribe Tropical, and ** retailer Dolls Kill and independent designer groups have accused Shein of stealing its product design, and even FamilyMart has accused Shein of copying the visual elements of an ice cream.
After falling into the sea of global brand rights protection, SHEIN also held high the banner of "intellectual property protection" and released a designer empowerment project in January this year, claiming to have provided support for 3,000 designers around the world. Subsequently, many designers around the world sued SHEIN for plagiarism again in May and July, causing widespread public condemnation.
The road for designers to defend their rights is not easy, and many designers have no choice but to say that for those who choose to contend with giant companies, it will often only be a losing battle. Maggie Stephenson, an American illustrator, once claimed in a complaint that SHEIN had put the SHEIN name and logo on the packaging of the allegedly infringing works with the aim of adding false copyright management information.
Judging from this false complaint, SHEIN's means of responding to infringement lawsuits are not only becoming more and more skillful, but also abusing legal loopholes to cover up "their own rights and interests", which is quite a bit funny of fake Li Ghost complaining about the real Li Kui.
The designer's copyright was stolen, how did shein steal the beams and change the pillars?
As early as July this year, Temu sued SHEIN in the United States, accusing it of violating U.S. antitrust laws, abusing its dominant market position, and forcing garment factories to sign exclusive agreements with it.
On July 25, following Temu, Swedish fashion retailer H&M sued SHEIN for copyright and trademark infringement at the same time. A spokesman for H&M said that H&M had filed a lawsuit against SHEIN in Hong Kong and provided evidence of dozens of items**, from swimsuits to sweaters, demanding damages from SHEIN and asking the court to grant an injunction.
The reason why the lawsuit was filed in Hong Kong is that SHEIN has set up a number of decentralized entities around the world to spread the risk of infringement, and SHEIN's parent company, ZOETOP Business, is located in Hong Kong.
It is also reported that Zoetop Business CoIn the past three years, it has been named as a defendant in at least 50 federal lawsuits in the United States for alleged trademark or copyright infringement, including Nike, Dextrons' UGG brand, Levi Strauss, trendy brand Stussy, Luxottica Group's Oakley sunglasses, ** retailer Dolls Kill, and dozens of independent artists, almost 10 times more than its main competitor, H&M.
Maggie Stephenson is one of dozens of artists suing Shein, who has 110,000 followers on Instagram and clients including Sephora, Urban Outfitters, Net-A-Porter Magazine and Mr Porter.
In the complaint, Stephenson stated that in the past three years, SHEIN had never attempted to contact the plaintiff for authorization to make art reproductions and commercialize them without authorization, which infringed the plaintiff's creative rights and economic interests. From $4, that's much lower than the $89 allowed at authorized retailers.
At the same time, it is also mentioned in the lawsuit that SHEIN mass-produces low-cost, low-quality "replicas" of high-end, high-quality designer goods created by others, and floods the entire market with cheap, counterfeit "designer" goods.
In his complaint, Stephenson further argued that the defendants also affixed the SHEIN name and logo to the packaging of the allegedly infringing works, an act of adding false copyright management information.
In this lawsuit by Temu, SHEIN also used the same trick to obtain copyright registration with the US Copyright Office through illegally obtained IP copyrights or false information. Temu pointed out in the lawsuit that from January to October 2023, Temu received about 170 copyright revocation notices every day, of which 63% of SHEIN's false complaints accounted for a total of 330,000 servings.
And shein sent 3The 30,000 DMCA (U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices did not provide the necessary evidence, and the claimed copyright coverage was limited to specific ** artistic elements, not the physical object of the clothing itself. In addition, these ** are not taken by shein, but the rights illegally seized from ** merchants.
This is exactly what happened to Stephenson, who first made false statements with the copyright registration authority, and then launched false complaints against other brands and designers, and completed the "stealing of pillars" through legal loopholes.
In addition, Temu also mentioned that SHEIN also prevented and intimidated ** merchants from contacting Temu through a "** party-style" exclusive transaction agreement, forcibly confiscated their electronic devices, forced to provide business information such as account passwords and transaction records related to Temu, and threatened to punish those who do business with Temu. In order to achieve user growth, SHEIN even copied Temu's game strategy and poached several of Temu's key marketing executives.
Caught in the infringement turmoil, SHEIN's design ability is in doubt.
For a long time, SHEIN has been a fast-fashion clothing platform, and in order to quickly cater to the preferences of the audience, it is destined to go further and further on the road of infringement.
In 2012, at the beginning of its establishment, SHEIN mainly adopted the DTC (direct-to-consumer) business model to provide first-class clothing for overseas markets such as the United States. Compared with traditional brands such as ZARA, SHEIN operates a huge ** market, which can capture market demand in a timely manner, relying on domestic garment factories, and producing and testing thousands of different clothing versions at the same time, which is undoubtedly a huge test for the design ability of the SHEIN team.
Data shows that from July to December 2021, SHEIN can add 2,000 to 10,000 SKUs to the app every day, and will only order a small batch of each dress, usually a few dozen, and then wait for the buyer's response.
Fast fashion is known for its frequent products**," said Sheng Lu, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies the global textile and apparel industry, "but SHEIN is completely different." According to its research, in 2021, the number of new products offered by SHEIN is already more than 20 times that of ZARA and H&M.
From the perspective of business model, SHEIN does have more advantages than traditional clothing brands. In 2022, SHEIN's sales will reach $30 billion, more than H&M and Zara combined, and it has become the world's largest fast fashion company in just a few years.
However, the rapid iteration of product requirements has also exposed the design shortcomings of SHEIN, resulting in infringement incidents again and again.
A designer of a big brand can design up to twenty or thirty styles per month, but Shein does not have high requirements for design. A person in charge of the Amazon seller organization in Xiamen, Fujian Province, revealed that SHEIN's internal software only contains simple design specifications, which can be designed by a college student, and can help manufacturers quickly execute new orders.
The person in charge also said that SHEIN will limit the inventory turnover cycle to about 30 days, and merchants have to produce a certain number of different styles of products every month, and some products will be delivered within 10 days at the earliest, which also brings more tests to SHEIN's design ability needs.
Today, SHEIN's clothing category has expanded from **, children's clothing, home clothing, etc., and the workload of the design team has increased geometrically, so it is not surprising that SHEIN has repeatedly fallen into infringement storms.
The global acquisition of "intellectual property copyright" made a big fuss about "intellectual property protection".
Not long ago, SHEIN was rumored to have secretly submitted a statement to the New York Stock Exchange again, with a valuation of about $66 billion, and once the IPO is successful, it will become the world's largest IPO in the past two years.
Obviously, the notoriety brought about by the "infringement storm" will become a stumbling block hindering SHEIN's listing. In order to successfully go ashore, SHEIN also realized the importance of improving its own image and made a big fuss in the field of "intellectual property protection".
In October this year, according to a late report, SHEIN acquired Missguided, a fast-fashion brand owned by British fashion retail group Frasers Group, and all its intellectual property. According to the cooperation agreement, in the future, MissGuided's products will be manufactured by SHEIN's flexible **chain and sold on the SHEIN platform.
Just two months ago, SHEIN acquired a stake in SPARC Group1 3, the parent company of fast fashion brand Forever 21. ABG Brand Group, a joint venture of SPARC Group, also recently entered into a long-term strategic cooperation agreement with SHEIN for the Forever 21 brand: SHEIN will design, manufacture and sell a range of Forever 21 branded apparel and accessories, including casual sportswear, swimwear and other categories, and SHEIN will also be responsible for the online sales of these products in the United States, parts of Europe and the Australian market.
Frightened by global brands, SHEIN, which was riddled with lawsuits, adhered to the principle of "buy them all if you can't beat them", and took a series of overseas brands under its command, trying to shake hands with these veteran nobles by "getting a piece of the pie".
In the group of designers, SHEIN is also actively saving its own image. In January this year, SHEIN released a designer empowerment project in the official *** to support 3,000 designers around the world.
It is worth mentioning that it took 3,000 designers around the world two years to design 25,000 original works, which is less than SHEIN's new needs in three days.
The designers didn't seem to buy SHEIN's overtures, and launched joint appeals in May and July this year, especially the "joint lawsuit of three independent designers" that pushed SHEIN's infringement to the forefront again.
On July 11, three independent designers, Krista Perry, Larissa Martinez and Jay Barron, also filed a joint lawsuit in the Federal District Court of California against fast fashion giant Shein for copyright infringement and allegedly violating the Anti-Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act, pushing Shein to the forefront.
The three independent designers claimed that SHEIN copied their work without their knowledge, as part of unethical business practices, including environmental destruction, creating unsafe working conditions, and tax evasion.
The lawsuit also alleges that SHEIN has run an algorithm-driven business designed to "deliberately accept, tolerate, and even encourage and facilitate such plagiarism" and that SHEIN has "automated the design process."
26-year-old Edinburgh illustrat Elora Pautrat also said when suing SHEIN that she would patiently write to the infringement team every time, and SHEIN did not reply to her at first, her stern statement was like a stone sinking into the sea, when she publicly complained on social **, SHEIN began to reply to apologize, promising not to infringe again, but a few months later, SHEIN will infringe again, and has stolen her work nearly 10 times.
Since the beginning of this year, Shein has been exposed many times to seek listing, but it has not been able to go ashore. Now, the copyright lawsuits of global brands and designers have ripped off the fig leaf for their listing in one fell swoop, and the U.S. legislature has also strengthened its scrutiny of SHEIN, adding another unknown to SHEIN's listing.
Edit: Sub One.