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A small-business owner has given insight into the dangers small businesses face when larger corporations exploit their products after Temu copied several items from their clothing store.
Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, Lonely Kids Club (LKC) founder Warwick Levy explained how he discovered over 1,000 copied product listings of their original designs on Temu and successfully had most of them removed through intellectual property complaints.
Founded in 2011, Lonely Kids Club prints to-order clothing, including graphic tees, on sourced blank garments and works with independent artists.
Levy recommended using registered trademarks where possible, collecting screenshots and links as evidence, submitting reports through Temu’s IP reporting portal, and keeping track of complaints to protect your original designs.
The story of Lonely Kids Club surfaced a stark caution for intellectual property and commercial lawyers about the large number of small businesses that are struggling with things such as unauthorised copying and selling of their products by larger corporations.
Immediate response to unauthorised copying
Levy’s experience highlights the operational disruption for small businesses, caused by widespread online IP infringement.
“We’d identified over 100 different products across roughly 1,000 listings from different sellers; that’s an estimate rather than an exact count, but it gives you an idea of the scale,” Levy said.
“My immediate response was to start saving screenshots and reporting them.
“Some were designs we’d been selling for years, like Claire Harrison’s Get In The Van.
“It was really upsetting seeing that work copied, and the reporting immediately created hours of work.”
Reflecting on the sheer volume of unauthorised listings, Levy noted the heavy toll it took on their daily operations.
“We’re a small team printing graphic tees to order in Sydney, so that time had to come from somewhere,” Levy said.
“The hard part was working out how to get the reports through while still keeping the business running.”
Rights and enforcement as a small business
Levy highlighted that enforcing intellectual property rights and seeking legal assistance present significant practical challenges for small-business owners.
“The rights and the evidence were only part of it; we still had to find the listings and get the complaints through a reporting system that kept closing or resetting,” Levy said.
“What surprised me was how much trial and error it took just to get a report submitted, even when we could show the original work alongside the copy.
“I also tried emailing directly and didn’t get a reply, as a small business, you’re fitting all of that around everything else.
“We eventually got the overwhelming majority of the identified listings removed, but having rights didn’t spare us the hours of work needed to get there.”
Evidence and permissions
To identify copied listings and support their removal, Levy highlighted the importance of distinguishing between designs owned by the brand and artwork created by independent artists, while collating clear evidence of unauthorised use.
“We searched our name and checked the results against our own products and original artwork,” Levy said.
“We kept listing links and screenshots, with dated original files to show where the work had come from.
“If the seller was using our name, that was something we could show in the screenshot too.”
Levy also noted that navigating intellectual property as a small business required careful distinction between brand-owned assets and independent creations.
“A design being sold by LKC doesn’t mean I drew it or that LKC owns its copyright,” Levy said.
“For a complaint about an artist’s copyright, I’d want the artist involved and clear permission to act for them.
“Our registered name gave us a separate basis for reporting listings that were using it.
“Those reports weren’t a claim that we owned every artist’s work.”
Choosing the best IP rights
Levy’s experience highlighted the importance of identifying the strongest applicable intellectual property right when pursuing online infringement complaints.
“The breakthrough came after I’d spent ages trying to explain the copied artworks individually,” Levy said.
“A lot of the listings were also using the Lonely Kids Club name, and we already had that name registered.
“Once I focused those reports on the use of our name, I could group listings together and they started moving much faster.”
For small businesses, navigating IP protection can be extremely difficult, with limited resources and the added complexity of protecting both their own brand and the independent artists they work with.
Reflecting on this outcome, Levy emphasised the importance of having thorough protections in place.
“It gave us a clearer basis for those particular complaints, I wouldn’t assume the same approach would deal with a copy that didn’t use our name,” Levy said.
“It made me appreciate having the registration in place already.
“It also made me want to be much clearer from the start about which rights we’re relying on and whose work we’re trying to protect.”
