Chinese giant offers proactive detection software solution to halt greetings designs theft
Technology could be Temu’s answer to the greeting card industry’s concerns over the plagiarism rampant on the Chinese-owned online marketplace.
At an online meeting organised by Thortful MD Pip Heywood with Temu, the Intellectual Property Office’s senior policy advisor Rianis Dickson, GCA CEO Amanda Fergusson and Emotional Rescue MD Brett Smith, the platform expressed its willingness to support a trial within the card sector of the proactive detection software it already uses in other areas.
Brett told PG Buzz: “We’re seeing plagiarism as one of the biggest threats to our industry at the moment, and one we all have work together on – we’re very happy to trial the software that Temu has suggested, if it goes some way to combating that.”
In the discussions, Amanda, Brett, and Pip had explained how UK card designers’ intellectual property is being stolen from websites, copied and then resold on Temu, which does have an “efficient” takedown process but the plagiarised content quickly reappears, often under different sellers.
This causes significant time loss for the creators in monitoring Temu and reporting the stolen designs, financial losses as other companies are making sales from their work, and significant emotional distress in seeing their cards misappropriated for someone else’s gain.
Amanda said: “It was good to meet with the Temu team, along with representatives from the IPO. Temu demonstrated a commitment to resolve these issues, but concerns remain about the practicality of some of the solutions currently proposed for GCA members.
“However, the technology Temu is now bringing in, along with the proposals discussed, are moving us forward towards, hopefully, ultimately resolving the issues – but there is a way to go at the moment.”
UK-based online greeting card marketplace Thortful is known to look after the artists, designers and publishers that sell through its platform and Pip had organised the online meeting following the greeting card industry’s widespread condemnation of the Chinese-owned business, and numerous articles featured on PG Buzz, including the issues over Temu’s appearance at Spring Fair.
After the widespread copyright infringement of UK greeting card designs on the platform, focusing on the challenges of design volume, subtle infringements evading detection, and repeat offenders, was flagged, the three Temu representatives – Fiona Yang, Mick Liu, and Tim Tong – outlined their IP protection programme, including proactive monitoring and reactive takedown processes, which currently take an average one business day to work.
Temu uses a vector system that assesses image similarity with scores of 1.0 being an exact match while nuanced designs over 0.6 are a possible match requiring human moderation, and employs a team to refine algorithms and address false positives. Similar technology is being explored by other industry players like Thortful.
The Temu team explained it has a three-strike policy for repeat infringers, leading to account suspension or termination, with a blacklist maintained to prevent terminated merchants from re-registering. However, the reliance on reactive reporting limits the effectiveness against repeat offenders.
They said the company’s proactive monitoring involves incorporating information on images and text from rights holders into algorithms to detect potential infringements before listing but, although it’s used by the platform, it is not currently applied to its greeting card catalogue.
However, they confirmed Temu is open to working with UK publishers and creators to ingest their designs into this detection software claiming it would be effective in protecting against direct theft as well as subtle changes to designs or the theft of copy and jokes.
The process would require collaboration with Temu offering non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to address confidentiality concerns about sharing assets with a non-business partner and defining a process by which rights-holders can bulk upload their back catalogues and future designs for this detection software to run against.
Pip said there was some debate about the time UK publishers and creators would need to invest in the system, but the Temu team claimed it would be a streamlined process that should be effective in countering infringement.
Temu has confirmed it is willing to support a trial of the proactive detection tech, and will define a process that supports privacy and confidentiality concerns while allowing rights holders to bulk upload their designs if they wish, in order to drive the proactive detection software, which will then allow for analysis of the process.
The Temu team said they hope it provides reassurance to the publisher community that enforcement is happening, and Amanda and the GCA have posed follow-up questions on how the tech will work, and how creator data will be stored and protected, while Emotional Rescue has agreed to trial the tech-led approach to proactive detection to understand how it will work from a creators’ perspective.
Pip commented: “It was a thorough, open and collaborative working session. Of the questions Thortful had posed before the meeting, all were met with well-prepared answers that gave us reassurance that Temu are willing to engage and have already-made solutions that could benefit our industry. I’m grateful for their time and enthusiasm to work with us.”
