Fast Fashion Counterfeits, The T-Shirt Copycat Surge
As the weather warms up, demand for graphic T-shirts spikes and so does counterfeit activity.
One clear pattern this month is how quickly trending designs are being replicated across marketplaces. A design gains traction, often on platforms like Etsy and within days identical versions begin appearing across multiple marketplaces globally.
T-shirts are particularly vulnerable to this kind of infringement. They are fast to produce, low cost to manufacture and easy to scale. For counterfeiters, this creates the perfect storm, minimal setup, high volume potential and low risk.
But the underlying quality tells a different story. These replicas are typically produced using inferior materials, where fabric and print degrade at different rates. The result is a product that often fails after just a few washes, even at low temperatures.
More importantly, these “viral” designs rarely appear out of nowhere. In most cases, they originate from independent creators, often small sellers who have invested time in building a successful product. Many of these designs can be traced back to original listings that have achieved strong traction or earned badges like 'Bestseller' status.
What follows is a familiar pattern:
visibility → replication → saturation → erosion of the original creator’s sales.
What buyers can do
There is a straightforward way to push back against this cycle:
- Use reverse image search to identify the original source of a design
- Purchase from the original creator rather than the lowest-cost duplicate
- Prioritise quality and support independent sellers over mass-produced copies
This isn’t just about avoiding poor-quality products, it’s about ensuring the people who create genuinely original work are the ones who benefit from it.
Structural Issues on TikTokShop IPPC
While the TikTok platform continues to evolve, its current IP enforcement systems are creating friction rather than efficiency:
- Registration limitations prevent certain types of copyright from being properly logged
- Automated image analysis fails to detect even minor edits or derivatives of original works
- Legitimate reports are being rejected due to an inability to recognise clear similarities
In practice, this means many cases require manual intervention from TikTok’s brand protection team, creating delays on both sides.
This isn’t just a volume issue, it’s a systems issue.
Improving image recognition capabilities alone would significantly reduce false rejections, streamline workflows and save substantial time for both rights holders and TikTok’s internal teams.
Amazon CCU Expands to India
Amazon has announced the expansion of its Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) to India. The CCU will bring together local experts, sellers and brands together with law enforcement to detect and remove counterfeit listings, protect IP rights, and take coordinated action against bad actors. The expansion comes amid rising concerns over online product authenticity, aiming to shift the burden of verification and protect against sophisticated scams.
Marketplace Breakdown: Who’s Acting, Who’s Lagging
This month shows a widening gap between marketplaces that are operationally effective at enforcement and those that are struggling to keep up. There are notable issues with TiktokShop this month (as detailed above) and Amazon takedown requests have seen weaker response times across marketplaces.
Top Performers: Fast and Consistent
The most responsive platforms this month have been Fruugo, Temu and Walmart.
Both platforms continue to demonstrate strong enforcement processes, with:
- Rapid response times
- Consistent removal decisions
- Minimal back-and-forth required
In most cases, reported infringements are removed within some of the shortest timeframes across all marketplaces we monitor. The key difference here is operational efficiency, their systems and teams are aligned and it shows.
Close behind is the Alibaba Group ecosystem, covering AliExpress and Alibaba. These platforms continue to process reports quickly overall, maintaining relatively strong enforcement performance. However, we are seeing a notable drop-off appears within Lazada.
Despite being managed through the same reporting infrastructure as Alibaba and AliExpress, Lazada’s performance tells a very different story:
- Slower response times
- Inconsistent removal decisions
- Reduced reliability in enforcement outcomes
This gap highlights a key issue, shared infrastructure does not guarantee shared performance. Execution at the platform level is where enforcement succeeds or fails.
Average Response Time by IP Type
The average response to both Patent and Registered Design claims have increase by 1 day over the last month. A number of marketplaces have begun to move to a 1-to-1 policy for design registrations and are more frequently rejecting removal requests, if there are any adjustments to designs. This opens opportunity for abuse of the system and requires additional communication before listings can be removed.
If you have any questions about how your IP can be enforced across different marketplaces, you can get in touch with our team here.
We are also working on a series of tools to help marketplaces identify infringements and process requests more efficiently. If you work for a ecommerce marketplace and would like to work with us, you can reach out to our team.
