The defendant of Shein platform is involved in infringement. How to develop cross-border e-commerce under the property rights storm?

Some online media have reported that the Shein platform was recently brought to court by AirWair International, a manufacturer of “Dr Martens” brand footwear products, on the grounds that the platform sold counterfeit products involving its brand. The plaintiff company said that there are more than 20 counterfeit products claiming to be “Martens boots” on this platform, and their prices are far lower than their genuine prices. But for this reason, the Shein platform denied it.

In fact, before AirWave filed a lawsuit, the Shein platform had already faced another intellectual property lawsuit. Earlier, Levi Strauss, a well-known clothing brand, sued that Shein had copied the “Arcuate” sewing style commonly used in the back pocket of Levi’s jeans. The lawsuit was finally settled, but no one knows the final settlement amount.

According to the data, SHEIN is a cross-border B2C Internet company dedicated to women’s fast fashion. As of May 2016, SHEIN has 10 million customers in 224 countries and regions around the world, sending hundreds of thousands of packages every day, and this trend is still growing rapidly.

In the “2017 China Global Leading Brand Ranking of People-oriented Marketing” released by KPMG Consulting and Facebook in 2017, Shein ranks in the top 50 together with well-known domestic brands such as Tencent, Netease and Huawei for its innovative marketing model and outstanding performance of its brands in the global digital marketing field. In 2019, WPP and Google, the world’s largest communication group, jointly launched the BrandZ authoritative brand list, and released the “2019 BrandZ China Top 50 Overseas Brand Report”, and SHEIN ranked 14th in the list of top 50 overseas brands. At the end of 2019, Shein’s sales more than doubled for the ninth consecutive year, which is equivalent to Zara in South Korea. During the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, like many online retailers, the popularity of the Shein platform soared, and it was even rumored that it was ready to go public.

In recent years, cross-border electronic commerce platform has increasingly become the social demand of most people. Thanks to the support of policies, rapid economic development and technological progress, the industries in cross-border electronic commerce are constantly developing and progressing. Even the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has little impact on cross-border e-commerce, and the industry continues to grow, especially the growth of total export value.

According to the data, we can see that from 2015 to 2020, China’s total merchandise trade will first decline and then rise. Due to the epidemic situation, until the first quarter of 2021, the epidemic situation in China was under stable control, and the total value of China’s import and export of goods reached 8.47 trillion yuan, up 29.2% year-on-year. A consulting analyst said that since 2016, the import and export of goods in China has maintained a relatively stable growth trend, which is the necessary foundation for the future development of cross-border electronic commerce, China.

In addition, cross-border electronic commerce will become a major development trend of international trade in the future, a cornerstone of China’s opening-up strategy, and an important tool to promote the development of modern industries in its industry and enhance their brand influence. With the repeated emphasis on the concept of “new domestic and international dual-cycle development model” and the formulation of RCEP agreement, the cross-border e-commerce industry has a very broad development prospect.

Industry professionals say that China’s overseas expansion opportunities in other developed markets are related to its brand tone and service efficiency. If they want to broaden their overseas markets, first, they should rely on products to achieve value and spiritual values to achieve achievements; Second, it focuses on integrating the final supply chain and winning by its size. With the achievements of Shein in the industry, the overseas cross-border e-commerce market began to split, which made many domestic e-commerce companies imitate their business routines, and many merchants turned to independence.

After the case, Shein wrote in a statement that our company respects every artist and designer who has worked hard. At the same time, our company will take every complaint about property rights seriously, and will thoroughly investigate whether the product really involves infringement, and if it does, we will seriously deal with the supplier of the product. Our company will increase investment in property rights, optimize and upgrade our audit process, and strictly screen every commodity to prevent infringement.

However, many people in the industry hold this view. With the rapid economic development, infringement cases are inseparable from companies that focus on the fast fashion industry, so Shein will face more such cases in the next development. Therefore, when dealing with such property rights cases, the affected e-commerce platform should also make a decision in time, that is, whether such goods are worth wasting time and resources.