Shopify is jointly sued by five major book publishers! Facing $500 million in claims!

It is learned that according to foreign media reports, five major publishers recently jointly sued Canadian e-commerce Shopify, claiming that the platform sold products that infringed the publishers' trademarks and copyrights, and demanded compensation of more than US$500 million.

The five publishers are reportedly Pearson Education, Macmillan Learning, Cengage Learning, Elsevier and McGraw Hill. They claimed in the lawsuit that Shopify assisted merchants in selling pirated textbooks, test materials and e-book PDFs, and that they had sent notifications to Shopify many times, pointing out the listings and online store information of pirated books on its platform, but Shopify did not prevent these products from continuing to be sold.

It is learned that the publishers also accused Shopify of allowing merchants to continue selling infringing products in order to expand its business model. Shopify's practice has no moral bottom line because when it knew that merchants were selling pirated books, it still provided merchants with store construction, network hosting and payment processing services.

It is reported that in response to the publishers' accusations, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein once said that the company would automatically delete products and stores that infringe copyrights or trademarks. However, publishers said that Shopify has not effectively curbed the continued sales of "pirated books". Now, "pirated books" on Shopify are still sold at prices lower than the genuine ones, which has dealt a serious blow to them and caused huge losses.

It is learned that in the face of this lawsuit, Shopify stated that since 2021, only more than 90% of copyright and trademark reports have been reviewed within 1 business day. In the future, its team will continue to seriously deal with books that infringe copyrights and trademarks, and will not hesitate to take action against merchants once violations are found.

Editor ✎ Nicole/

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