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 greetings card industry.
Amanda Mountain, the co-founder of York-based Lola Design, discovered the catalogue of designs she had built up over a decade had nearly all been copied. She found the images she had created had been lifted and were being advertised by other sellers on cards and other products like t-shirts.
After pressure from the Greeting Card Association (GCA), Temu has now put in place a bespoke takedown process for the industry which, it says, will mean stolen designs are removed more quickly and won't be able to be re-uploaded.
According to the GCA, the system uses AI to log the designer's original creation as a protected image, blocking any products using that design before they appear for sale.
In a statement, Temu said intellectual property protection is a top priority and that it had invested heavily to strengthen trust with brands, sellers and consumers. The changes have received a positive response from industry leaders, who see it as a first step in addressing the challenges posed by counterfeiting.
As Amanda expressed, this goes beyond just business; it's about preserving the creative spirit and future of small businesses reliant on the greeting card market.
