Temu Takes Steps to Combat Copyright Infringement in Greeting Cards

Thu Oct 23 2025 09:33:42 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

Temu, the online shopping giant, agrees to enhance its processes for removing copied greeting card designs in response to industry pressure, aiming to protect intellectual property more effectively.

Online retail platform Temu has pledged to improve its response time in removing counterfeit greeting cards from its site. Following significant concerns from the greeting card industry about copyright infringement, the company now offers a new trial process that allows designers to report stolen images more efficiently. This shift aims to protect the intellectual property of card designers who have faced substantial financial losses due to the proliferation of plagiarized products.

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.

Amanda bought one of the cards using her design and found the image was distorted and the paper was of a poorer quality than hers. It's not a nice feeling to see something you've poured all your love and hours into taken within minutes, she told the BBC.

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 will then use AI to log the designer's original creation as a protected image, blocking any products using that design before they appear for sale.

Temu stated that most requests to take down copyrighted content were resolved within three working days, adding that the new trial would lead to more automatic removals.

Amanda Fergusson, the GCA's chief executive, expressed optimism about the changes, emphasizing the importance of protecting original designs. For Amanda and her husband Frank, their livelihoods—and the integrity of the greeting card supply chain—are on the line.