Shopify is accused of harboring infringing sellers and may face a $500 million claim!

Recently, five publishers filed a joint lawsuit in a US court, accusing Shopify of failing to delete listings and stores that infringed on publishers' trademarks and copyrights, and demanding more than $500 million in damages.

It is understood that the plaintiff publishers are Macmillan Learning, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, McGraw Hill and Pearson Education.

In the lawsuit, they claimed that Shopify assisted platform sellers in selling infringing e-books and profited from them. The publishers said that since 2017, they have provided Shopify with lists of infringing sellers, but Shopify did not prevent these sellers from using the platform, but continued to provide them with services such as store building, web hosting and payment processing.

Publishers believe that Shopify has been turning a blind eye to this large-scale infringement because it is popular among Shopify users and plays a role in attracting and retaining users who pay monthly subscription fees to Shopify. In addition, sellers who sell pirated products also pay transaction fees, including commissions on those infringing sales.

The publishers asked the court for up to $150,000 in damages for each infringed copyright and up to $2 million for each counterfeit trademark, and listed more than 3,400 copyrights that the platforms allegedly violated.

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein previously said that if the company found a storefront was infringing copyright or trademark, it would remove it. But publishers pointed out that anyone viewing the storefront, including Shopify, could see that they were dedicated to selling pirated textbooks.

In response, a Shopify representative said the company is working to eliminate copyright infringements and said it has multiple teams to handle potential acceptable use policy violations, including copyright and trademark infringements, and will not hesitate to take action against stores when violations are discovered. As of 2021, more than 90% of copyright and trademark reports are reviewed within 1 business day.

Not long ago, Wish was severely punished by France for lax product supervision and could not be searched on major search engines and mobile application stores. French authorities emphasized that when Wish is informed that dangerous goods are sold on the platform, these products will be removed within 24 hours. However, in most cases, these products are still available under different names, sometimes even from the same seller.

This is a wake-up call for everyone. If only a small number of sellers infringe copyright or sell inferior products, they will be the only ones affected. However, if multiple sellers do this, the platform will be at risk of collapse, and other innocent sellers will also be affected. Everyone should understand the principle that if the lips are cold, the teeth will perish. Compliance is the best policy.

Shopify

Infringement

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