Lola Designs: 'We have lost out on £100,000 due to online design theft on sites such as Temu and Shein

Amanda and Frank Mountain, who run the York-based Lola Designs which creates art work for greeting cards, said they had lost out on £100,000 due to online design theft.

They said felt there was little they could do to stop the sales, with change needed to make sites hosting products more accountable.

A spokesperson for Temu, one of the platforms the couple said hosted products, said Lola Designs was one of thousands it proactively protected with round-the-clock monitoring and intellectual property checks.

It comes as York Central MP Rachael Maskell called for more to be done to protect businesses such as Lola Designs after being approached by the couple for help.

The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) said it is aware of the case and is continuing to engage with e-commerce sites to remove products featuring stolen designs.

Mr and Mrs Mountain have built up their business over the last decade and they now supply major retailers and ship their products as far afield as New Zealand.

Inspiration for the designs comes from Mrs Mountain’s love of animals and nature.

The couple said the low-cost products featuring their designs was not only undercutting their business but also harming other UK firms in their supply chain.

They added they did not have the resources to pursue those responsible for copyright claims and current intellectual property laws were failing to protect them.

Mrs Mountain said: “We always thought this would happen at some point and at first we tried to ignore it, but now we’ve had more than 50 of our designs stolen that have been put on thousands of products that have been sold, we’ve lost an estimated £100,000 in sales.

“I was completely shocked. It wasn’t just one design here and there, it’s mass industrial copying. Copying has happened to us so much over the years that I’ve become a bit numb to it, but when it happens on this scale it leaves me questioning why I keep going.

“There’s a piece of me in every design I do, so it feels like every time someone does this they’re taking a piece of me.

“We’ve contacted Temu and other market place sites and they have taken products down but by then they’ve already made their money, they say they want to protect our intellectual property but all they want to do is make a profit.

“We’re risking legitimising this kind of behaviour by allowing these online marketplace platforms to build their businesses on the back of these sales.

“We know other companies have been affected by this, whenever I check to see if our designs have been stolen I see so many other designs from other small greeting card businesses.”

Mr Mountain said: “We’re losing around one in every 10 sales to people who’ve taken our designs and sold products on these platforms, this is happening on an industrial scale. That’s a tenth of our earnings, it’s a huge hit for us, we think these online market places should be held to account for those losses and they should be legally required to pay compensation.

“What’s more, these goods are being sold on platforms which are based overseas that aren’t paying VAT or business rates here in the UK. So it’s not just affecting us, design theft is having an impact on jobs, the high street and Government revenue. If it carries on its going to have a huge effect on creative industries and the UK economy.

“We want the Government to put more safeguards in place, current copyright laws aren’t enough because it means we have to pay for lawyers to make claims and that isn’t an option for us.”

Creative Industries Minister Chris Bryant said the Government was committed to a strong intellectual property regime when Labour MP Ms Maskell raised Lola Designs’ case in Parliament in November.

The couple have since met with the IPO and its spokesperson said it continues to support small businesses and the public to report copyright infringement.

The spokesperson said: “The IPO continues to engage with the major e-commerce stores in the UK and overseas to remove goods identified as infringing or counterfeit, and permanently remove persistent sellers from their platforms. We publish guidance to help traders protect their IP rights on all major e-commerce stores, including Temu.”

A spokesperson for Temu, owned by the China-based PDD Holdings, said it had created an improved brand protection centre and expanded its IP team to crack down on infringement.

It added it required sellers to agree to do business lawfully, including protecting consumer rights and obeying intellectual property rules.

Shein, another online market place site named by Mr and Mrs Mountain as one hosting counterfeit products, did not respond to multiple requests for a comment on the claims.

Temu’s spokesperson said: “We’ve set up a specialized system dedicated to the protection of intellectual property rights and an associated reporting structure. These systems act as swift, responsive mechanisms to address any intellectual property infringement claims made by rights holders or consumers.

“We have also incorporated the relevant works from Lola Design to our IP database for proactive monitoring. We take immediate and robust actions to rectify any such issues and we remain committed to engaging with stakeholders to refine our services.”