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 greeting card industry.
Amanda Mountain, the co-founder of York-based Lola Design, discovered that the catalogue of designs she had built up over a decade had nearly all been copied. She found her images lifted and advertised by other sellers on cards and products like t-shirts.
Amanda bought one of the cards using her design and found the image was distorted and the paper of poorer quality.
After pressure from the Greeting Card Association (GCA), Temu has now implemented a bespoke takedown process for the industry, which promises quicker removal of stolen designs that won't be re-uploaded.
The new software streamlines reporting; firms now only need to submit one link to remove multiple listings using the same design, significantly reducing their workload.
Temu claims to have invested heavily in resources aimed at strengthening trust with brands and consumers, asserting that the majority of take-down requests are resolved within three working days.
Amanda Fergusson, the GCA's chief executive, praised Temu’s changes as a much-needed first step to tackle the problem, emphasizing the importance of protecting creativity in the industry.
