At the beginning of this year, cross-border merchants ushered in a good news.
On February 19th, according to a blogger in the legal profession, SHEIN has made new progress in the infringement complaint initiated by TEMU merchants in the UK, and TEMU's application to refute SHEIN's complaint about the use of merchant ** has been approved, SHEIN's copyright complaint has been rejected, and the copyright of the merchant held through the exclusive agreement has also been rejected by the court, which means that cross-border merchants have taken off the tight spell on their heads and won the key battle of rights protection.
The UK court issued a new decree and SHEIN's false complaint was dismissed.
Since last year, the two major cross-border platforms of SHEIN and TEMU have been suing each other overseas, and the lawsuit occurred in August last year, SHEIN launched a lawsuit against TEMU in London, UK, claiming that the products of TEMU sellers were suspected of infringement, and applied to the court for a temporary restraining order to require TEMU sellers to remove relevant products from the shelves.
Before the issuance of this decree, thousands of cross-border sellers were complained by SHEIN, and suffered losses such as product removal and capital freezing due to temporary restraining orders. In the cross-border industry, it has become a long-term consensus in the industry that small and medium-sized sellers suffer from intellectual property bullying, especially during the hot selling period of the Spring Festival, malicious infringement complaints always appear in a pile, so that many cross-border sellers call it "difficult to pass the New Year". The British court's judgment has allowed small and medium-sized businesses to regain their autonomy over copyright, opening a new chapter in overseas rights protection.
The copyright ** was rejected by the court, and SHEIN's usual methods failed.
In August last year, SHEIN filed a lawsuit against Temu in the British High Court, and the court issued a temporary injunction to Temu's sellers on September 28 in accordance with the usual practice, and more than 8,000 products of thousands of merchants were affected, causing a lot of losses to the operation of the platform and the operation of merchants.
Subsequently, Temu actively defended the rights of small and medium-sized sellers, and refuted the copyright complaint against SHEIN to the court, and the two parties entered the evidence stage. According to court documents, in order to prove that it owns the merchant's copyright, SHEIN presented evidence to show the "exclusivity agreement" signed by the merchant when it entered the platform, but it was rejected by the court.
The judge sympathized with the merchant's plight and held that since the merchant usually sells its products on multiple platforms, relying solely on the merchant's onboarding agreement is not sufficient to prove that SHEIN enjoys copyright ownership.
In the face of the ** questioned by Temu's lawyer, SHEIN failed to produce valid copyright evidence. In the reasons for the verdict, the judge expressed great surprise at this: "After spending so much time and attorney fees, Shein failed to provide a complete copyright certificate for the ** that Temu challenged." ”
In the verdict, the English court expressed surprise at SHEIN's failure to produce a complete copyright certificate.
After the two parties adduced detailed evidence, the court found that SHEIN failed to effectively prove that it owned the merchant's copyright, issued an order to the lawyers of both parties to declare Temu's rebuttal effective, and emphasized that Temu had the right to file a claim, and the temporary restraining order previously issued was also terminated from the date of issuance of the decree, and the complained merchant did not need to remove the relevant products.
In addition, the court also put forward new requirements for SHEIN's follow-up complaints, for the ** taken by the merchant, SHEIN must submit the photographer's information, the first copyright owner certificate and the complete transfer of rights when complaining. If you can't provide complete proof, Temu and the merchant don't need to pay attention to SHEIN's complaint.
In fact, initiating competition through copyright complaints has become a common method for SHEIN. In December last year, Temu sued SHEIN again in the United States, and the focus of the accusation was that SHEIN initiated 330,000 false infringement complaints, many of which are as confusing as the London case, such as the complaint that Temu's infringing product is a "backpack", but the evidence provided by SHEIN is indeed a "hairpin".
Temu presented evidence of SHEIN's false complaint in the litigation filings.
In the lawsuit, Temu also described in detail how SHEIN forced merchants to enter into unequal agreements. SHEIN first introduced merchants to its Guangzhou office in the name of cooperating with internal anti-corruption, solving operational difficulties, and discussing potential cooperation. However, as soon as the merchant arrived at SHEIN's office, he was locked in a room for up to 10 hours, and was subjected to repeated pressure from SHEIN's investment promotion, legal and other employees.
The documents show that as a condition for leaving SHEIN's office, merchants are forced to "agree" to unequal copyright and operating terms, and even make false claims, including claiming that the copyrights of products sold on Temu belong to SHEIN, even if they are independently developed by merchants. If Temu's merchant refuses to sign, SHEIN employees will intimidate and threaten the merchant with "punishment" and "store closure".
An overseas professional lawyer analyzed that the essence of SHEIN's previous complaint was to take advantage of the loopholes in the copyright complaint process and use its ** that has not obtained statutory copyright to make malicious complaints against merchants on competitor platforms, which interfered with fair competition in the market.
The rights protection of small and medium-sized businesses has ushered in a new chapter, and the hegemony of intellectual property may be suspended.
In the cross-border industry, the Q4 quarter of each year to the Spring Festival is a period of high incidence of malicious complaints. According to some merchants, affected by the consumption of domestic and foreign holidays such as Halloween, Christmas season, and Chinese New Year, many cross-border merchants will be targeted by competitors and rogue law firms during this period to demand high settlement money.
In mid-December last year, thousands of Amazon merchants of domestic lamps and lanterns encountered similar malicious temporary restraining orders. In this list of defendants, there are many monthly sales of one million, more than 10,000 reviews, and high praise of 48 of the top sellers. The infringement is a 15-year-old patent, which is difficult to relate to today's products.
Many sellers have to choose to pay a high settlement fee knowing that it is a malicious complaint, on the one hand, because they lack overseas lawyer resources and cannot respond to the lawsuit, and on the other hand, the store funds are frozen and they cannot afford to spend it. On platforms such as Zhihu, many merchants have shared similar experiences, once they choose to appear in court to defend themselves, the store will be frozen for more than several months, and the cost is too high.
Overseas ** reports pointed out that cross-border businesses were affected by TRO, resulting in layoffs, closures and other problems.
However, in recent times, there have been more and more positive signals for cross-border merchants to protect their rights.
On February 1, according to the American magazine "Procurement", SHEIN filed a new lawsuit with the Northeast District Court of Illinois to initiate temporary restraining orders (TRO) against dozens of cross-border sellers. Subsequently, 22 cross-border sellers hired overseas lawyers to actively respond to the lawsuit and objected to SHEIN's motion for a preliminary injunction. A seller lawyer noted that the Singapore-based company has been "using TRO as a tool for anti-competitive schemes to force merchants to sell through SHEIN rather than its competitors."
Similarly, the cross-border merchants who were applied for TRO by SHEIN this time also suffered a lot of losses. According to court documents, a seller called Guangzhou Dexian Clothing was asked by SHEIN for a $400,000 settlement, but the actual profit from the alleged products sold by the company was less than $1,500.
Lawyers for cross-border merchants also claimed that one of the tro had a devastating impact on the merchant's business by freezing all of the merchant's financial accounts (even funds unrelated to the alleged sale of the product). According to court documents, one merchant with 500 employees laid off more than 300 employees, another with 1,000 workers are facing unemployment, and some businesses can only rely on personal credit cards to pay workers.
We were forced to settle in the past, but the decision of the British court gave us hope and strengthened our confidence in defending our rights." A cross-border merchant said.
Many people in the legal profession also expressed their support for the judgment of the British court, and they believe that the judgment of the British court is undoubtedly a major benefit for small and medium-sized businesses, which means that SHEIN's attempt to monopolize the intellectual property rights of merchants through the compulsory transfer clause of intellectual property rights has failed, and merchants have lifted the tight spell hanging over their heads and can operate freely on multiple platforms.
For many cross-border businesses that were once bullied by copyright, this is tantamount to a nirvana rebirth.
The Tao is always reasonable, and he used to use the name Crooked Dao, a new ** in the Internet and technology circle. This article is an original article, and it is forbidden to retain any form of author-related information**.