Law firm wins substantial US compensation for British publisher
David and Goliath stories do come true as publisher Bug Art has proved by securing a substantial compensation from online marketplace giants Amazon and Walmart for counterfeit products using its stolen images being sold on their respective platforms.
Thanks to UK-based law firm Edwin James IP, the business run by founder and creative director Jane Crowther and her sister Ann Crowther as financial director, has been successful in taking on the Chinese sellers – and they’re now aiming for Temu.
Working solely with artists, Kingston-based Edwin James has already achieved £27.64million ($35m) in compensation for 330 individuals since it started working on these cases, taking 52,000 “bad guys to court” in collaboration with US lawyers.
“Edwin James has had great success in seeking compensation for us from Amazon and Walmart,” Jane told PG Buzz. “We’ve just received our first quarter’s payment, a six-figure sum, with several hundred cases still pending –Temu next and possibly Meta to follow.”
She explained that over the past few years, she was aware of thousands of sites across the world selling products using unlicensed Bug Art images, and the Nottingham based publisher is currently going through proceedings for around 1,800 products, with around half the cases settled so far.
“All of these products emanate from China and are advertised on Meta, Amazon, Walmart and Temu etc. It was a hopeless situation with seemingly, no way forward until a year ago, when Edwin James IP contacted us and took up our cause with the US courts.
“We do have a couple of legitimate licence agreements in place, with products branded as Bug Art, but most of the illegal products using our images are clothing, cushions and bags – not cards, thankfully.”
All the infringements found have originated and are based in China, with some administrators based in Asia and the US, while the websites pretend to be based in Europe or America but are actually Chinese, and difficult and time-consuming processes have been put in place to discourage reporting infringements.
Jane added: “It was a year ago that Edwin James IP contacted us and said they’d seen a lot of our images on dodgy sites. With no cost to ourselves, EJ said they were able with the help of US lawyers to take on the large marketplaces such as Amazon, Wish, AliExpress, eBay and more recently Temu. They have started in the US and are planning to extend to the EU in 2025.
“We are pleased to say that we have recently received substantial compensation from the American courts, for dozens of sellers on Amazon and Walmart in the US.
“We’re not sure which marketplaces the second half of the cases apply to but I’m aware EJ are working on Temu at the moment. They’ve also been looking into Meta and believe they may have a way to get compensation there, which would be great.”
The way it works is that through the lawyers the artist copyrights all images in the US and, using Amazon US as an example, which has dozens of sellers using stolen Bug Art images, the US lawyers apply to the courts who contact Amazon to place a temporary restraining order on all those sellers.
Each seller has a positive cash balance in their Amazon account, and the platform has records of how many items were sold.
Jane added: “The seller negotiates an agreed amount of compensation or, if they don’t, all their frozen funds are taking from the Amazon account regardless of the number of products they’ve sold!”
David Denholm, CEO of Edwin James, explained the company had launched officially in 2020, having previously trialled the business by representing the Pets Rock brand created by greetings and gift company Takkoda, and it “specialises in stopping Far East counterfeit and recovering lost earnings on behalf of artists with no upfront costs”.
Originally founded by artists to support artists, it has a team of 20 researches who compile the evidence: “This includes scouring the internet for evidence of counterfeit, building legal bundles on behalf of infringed artists and managing the entire process. The artist never needs to speak to an attorney or attend court.
“We not only protect their intellectual property, we recover and return their lost earnings. Edwin James does all the heavy lifting taking the burden of protecting their artwork off the artists’ shoulders so that they can spend more time doing what they love,” said David.
“We cannot, of course, promise anybody anything. Once we take a bad guy’to court and win, their account gets frozen, but it depends on how much is in there for us to retrieve. We take on all the costs whatever and then split the damages with the artist.”
Adding some context to the severity of the issue, David commented: “Based on what is stopped at the border, Forbes magazine acknowledged there is more money in counterfeit products than drugs in the States. But it’s worse than that as, with the Chinese marketplaces, goods are shipped direct to people’s homes and bypass border customs, which is why it is now so rife.”
Edwin James will work with any artist on cases where they expect to get at least a $500 payout (£395) and can be contacted via www.edwinjamesip.com.
