Temu Enhances Removal of Counterfeit Greeting Cards Following Industry Pressure

Thu Oct 23 2025 23:10:22 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

Temu partners with the greeting card sector to streamline the removal of plagiarized designs, responding to criticisms about counterfeit products affecting designer sales.

E-commerce platform Temu has agreed to expedite the removal of fake greeting cards from its site after the Greeting Card Association advocated for stronger measures against copyright infringement. The new takedown process will allow designers to report copied designs more efficiently, utilizing AI technology to prevent re-uploading of such products. This move is seen as a significant step in protecting the interests of original creators, who have lost substantial revenue to counterfeit sales.

Online shopping giant Temu has agreed to work with the greeting card industry to remove copied designs from its site more quickly.

Card firms say hundreds of their copyrighted images have been used to create cheap rip-offs, costing them thousands of pounds in lost sales.

Designers told the BBC the process for getting the plagiarised listings removed has been like the fairground game 'whack-a-mole' with copied products re-appearing within days.

Temu said protecting intellectual property was a 'top priority' and that it was encouraging sellers to join the trial of a new takedown process specifically for the greetings card industry.

Amanda Mountain, the co-founder of York-based Lola Design, discovered the catalogue of designs she had built up over a decade had nearly all been copied.

Amanda and her husband, Frank, estimate that fraudulent versions of their products have made online sellers £100,000 in sales, equivalent to 13% of Lola Design's annual turnover.

After pressure from the Greeting Card Association (GCA), Temu has now put in place a bespoke takedown process that allows designers to submit a single link for removing multiple listings. The enhanced process reportedly blocks products from being listed if they match any protected designs.

In a statement, Temu emphasized its commitment to intellectual property protection and stated that most requests to remove copyrighted material are resolved within three working days. The company is optimistic that these changes will help address longstanding concerns from creators about copyright infringement.

As Amanda Fergusson, the GCA's chief executive, noted, the steps taken by Temu are a welcome development, addressing the frustrations faced by members of the greeting card industry.