Affecting sellers! Domestic cross-border independent station giants are sued by North American counterparts

For enterprises going overseas, independent websites are an important channel. As the e-commerce market becomes more and more popular in various countries, the competition in the industry is becoming more and more fierce, and the same is true for SaaS website building platforms.

Recently, Shopfiy, a well-known North American website building platform headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, filed an infringement lawsuit against Shopline, a well-known domestic website building platform, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

According to Digital Commerce 360, 117 of the top 1,000 online retailers in North America use Shopify as their website building channel. Last year, the total online sales of these 117 online retailers exceeded $97.2 billion.

Shopline is more famous in China. According to data, Shopline's team is distributed in more than ten regions around the world, with more than 1,000 people, serving 400 million consumers and more than 270,000 sellers. It has served well-known brands such as Aoki and Xike, and announced its entry into the US market in March this year.

According to the lawsuit, Shopify believes that Shopline has infringed its copyright in the United States and around the world by creating a program called Seed that imitates its "core of success" Dawn.

Shopify said that as a program, Dawn allows platform sellers to quickly launch attractive online businesses and design unique online stores for users; it (Dawn) is the product of thousands of hours of hard work by Shopify employees and millions of dollars of investment by the company. It has been registered in the United States and is protected by copyright.

Shopify mentioned in the lawsuit that the evidence of Shopline's plagiarism is unquestionable, from the highest level of overall organization to the smallest level of individual lines of code; the directory layout organization of Seed matches the layout of Dawn - using the same names and the same labels, and having the same code content; this would not have happened if these programs were developed independently by Shopline .

Shopify believes that Shopline's behavior is "an attempt to weaken its competitive advantage through theft." In addition to infringing code and imitating appearance, Shopline also tried to make Shopify seller users leave and choose Shopline, but Shopify did not make interference-centered allegations.

Shopify also sued Shopline user Fosterry, and believed that Shopline should bear joint liability for the infringement of its seller user Fosterry - they used "counterfeit Dawn" to promote their own business, and then publicly displayed Shopline's counterfeit 'Dawn' in the United States and around the world.

Shopify hopes that the court will order Shopline to stop infringing on its rights and require Shopline to pay compensation, but the amount of compensation is not specified in the lawsuit. In addition, Shopify also hopes that Shopline will pay the litigation costs. Currently, the lawsuit is being scheduled.

In fact, before this case, there have been a growing number of cases centered on allegations of copying website designs. It is reported that most of these cases are based on trade dress infringement - based on the "overall look and feel" of the website being sued, without making copyright claims, because the website design itself (as distinct from the code used to build the website) is generally not subject to copyright protection. With the increasing popularity of e-commerce, website and application-based trademark infringement claims may continue to appear in future lawsuits.

Independent website

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