Shein Now Copies Temu’s Copyright Case

Shein’s complaint against Temu starts off with a bang, with the first sentence accusing Temu of “an unlawful enterprise based on counterfeiting, theft of trade secrets, infringement of intellectual property rights, and fraud.” But I think you’d have to go big if the lawsuit against You accuses you of using “mafia” type intimidation tactics.

It gets worse, Shein claims. Temu is not a marketplace at all. “It controls every aspect of its sellers’ activities,” the complaint reads. “It determines what products they can list and at what prices; encourages them to infringe on the intellectual property rights of others; and even prevents them from removing their products from Temu’s website after they admit to infringing.” Let me be clear: I’m still in the first paragraph of this complaint, a paragraph that uses bitchy quotation marks around every instance where Temu is called a “marketplace.”

“This relentless pursuit of low prices is essential to the business model and competitive strategy, but the low prices are achieved by any means necessary,” Shein writes about Temu in his lawsuit today. I wonder who else we could say that about!

Some of Temu’s alleged tactics: