I’m Hand Painted Stuff, a small business from North Somerset. I started out selling my work at markets in about 2010 and due to the Covid pandemic, moved to selling on Etsy in late 2020. My business really took off there and even though markets eventually reopened I decided to stay selling exclusively through Etsy.

Earlier in 2024 two fellow market traders happened to get in touch with me to let me know that they’d seen my work on Shein and Temu. Upon checking it out we (my husband and I) found several of my designs (magpies, robins, blue tits, wrens, goldcrests, and goldfinches). Each listing on these sites was using multiple photographs that I had taken of my designs, stolen from my Etsy shop, plus photoshopped images that showed dimensions, and my designs in other settings (these were few and far between). It was pretty shocking to see my kitchen where I take most of the photos, and my hands, holding my work on Shein and Temu. Doing a more thorough inspection we actually ended up finding between 30 and 40 separate listings of my work. We spent hours and hours combing through them and reporting each individual copyright infringement to Shein and Temu. After a couple of days these were all removed.

A few weeks later, another friend alerted me to a seller on Etsy who was selling copies of my robin design. When I got in touch with this seller she accused me of stealing all my designs from Ali Express. She had copied the robin from there. When I looked on AliExpress, I found the same birds that had been copied by Shein and Temu, only this time there were hundreds of them, plus another of my designs, a little bumble bee, which was listed so many times I counted 84 separate entries for it in two minutes. Each design was listed multiple times. Another friend then got in touch to tell me they were on Walmart and Amazon as well. There were so many we didn’t really know where to start, but my husband started to fill in the copyright infringement forms that we’d done for Shein and Temu. To cut a long story short, AliExpress never even replied, Amazon and Walmart just wanted more and more proof that it was my work, and we couldn’t get a resolution. It was all extremely stressful. Seeing my hand made and hand painted work, that I’d developed over the last ten years or so and had been selling as a quality item, now reduced to a cheap copy (an exact copy of my shapes, with my painting photographed onto the shape) was absolutely soul destroying. My husband and I just couldn’t deal with it anymore because of the sheer numbers involved and we were not having any success with AliExpress, Amazon or Walmart.

I was already a member of Anti Copying in Design (ACID) and had been made aware of SnapDragon, ACID’s Brand Protection Partner through them. I got in touch with SnapDragon and spoke to Jet, their Brand Protection Director, via a couple of Zoom meetings. She was very easy to talk to and very reassuring. SnapDragon had a look through the listings on the three offending websites and found over 700 copyright infringements. They showed me all the examples they had found on just this initial search. It was screen after screen of my work. It’s a really horrible feeling knowing that there are so many stolen copies of my work out there, but after a consultation, SnapDragon are working to get as many of them taken down as quickly as possible. It’s an emotional thing to know your creations have been stolen by huge companies that we felt we had no power over. It was such a relief to hand it over to someone a company who deals with this every day, as I know that it was completely beyond our capabilities to get on top of it ourselves. Hopefully, eventually, due to SnapDragon’s intervention, Amazon, AliExpress and Walmart will take heed. We’ve already seen a massive drop in the numbers of copies available online.

Laura Newbold Breen., CEO of Anti Copying in Design (ACID) said, “It is brilliant to see our members having much deserved success against copycat chancers. We are grateful to have ACID brand protection partner, SnapDragon, and our brilliant IP Specialist Legal Affiliates by our members’ sides to ensure these copyists are held to rights.

Long may the ACID Community keep fighting together to hammer home the importance of original creations and safe, compliant designs. If you have any copying concerns, please get in touch with ACID, whether you’re a member or non-member – we’re here for you”.

Dids Macdonald OBE., Co-Founder of Anti Copying in Design (ACID) said, “It is high time that our UK government holds global online platforms to account and imperative that these Goliath organisations also demonstrate responsibility for sellers who market knock offs on their platforms. I call on all intellectual property creators to write to their MP to ask the government why they would appear to let this insidious culture of indiscriminate copying continue which does nothing but erode our talented UK designers’ means of selling their original designs”.

Mary Kernohan, Head of Business Development of SnapDragon said, “We understand the personal and emotional impact on designers when their creations are unlawfully sold, and are committed to protecting their online originality and uniqueness. Our  AI-powered software and brand protection experts offer top-tier protection by swiftly detecting and removing online infringements that can harm designers’ revenue, reputation and consumers. Our collaboration with ACID reflects a shared goal to safeguard designers’ rights and reduce the prevalence of counterfeit products on a global scale”.

If you are an ACID member and have a case study you would like to share with us to publicise or use as evidence in the upcoming Design Consultation by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), please do email us at [email protected].

If you would like a template letter to send to your local MP, please get in touch and we will send one over.

To learn more about our partner SnapDragon and the fantastic work they do with brand protection, online infringements and takedowns please visit them at SnapDragon IP. If you are an ACID member, you receive a discount using their services.

Please take a look at ACID member Handpainted Stuff who kindly shared her infringement case study with us.