Two large, public, and distinguished ecommerce technology corporations will soon square off in court over software copycat and infringement issues. Shopify Inc. has filed a lawsuit against a U.S. subsidiary of JOYY Inc.
Shopify is an ecommerce platform developer and repair provider. Joyy is a video-based social media platform that trades on NASDAQ.
The suit filed within the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Recent York alleges that Shopline Commerce Pte. Ltd. and Shopline US Inc. created a copycat version of Dawn, Shopify’s computer program that allows the creation of customizable storefront templates.
“Shopify merchants can use Dawn to quickly launch a compelling online presence or to design their unique store,” Shopify says in its lawsuit. “It’s the product of many 1000’s of hours of creative effort by Shopify employees and the investment of many thousands and thousands of dollars and Dawn is protected by copyrights registered in the USA.”
In North America, 117 of the Top 1000 online retailers use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the most important online retailers within the region by annual web sales. In 2023, those 117 online retailers combined for greater than $9.72 billion in web sales.
Shopify sues Shopline
Shopify alleges that Shopline copied Dawn and is now distributing what it calls “a thinly disguised knockoff” called Seed.
“Shopline’s derivative of Dawn still carries damning evidence of Shopline’s wholesale copying,” Shopify says in its suit. “The file structure and layout, file names, function names, lines of code and even icon codes from Shopify’s original can still be present in Seed. The ‘Shopify’ name still appears within the code of varied versions of Seed that Shopline is distributing. And Shopify has found a Chinese webpage hosted by Joyy bearing the title: “Seed Theme” that also carries headers reading ‘dawn-test.’”
Digital Commerce 360 reached out for comment to JOYY but has yet to receive a response.
“We’ve taken aggressive legal motion against Shopline to uphold the integrity of Shopify’s products,” a Shopify spokesperson said in an announcement. “We’ll proceed to fiercely defend our mental property from bad faith actors.”
The Shopify lawsuit contends that Shopline violated Shopify’s copyright each within the U.S. and globally.
“To create Seed, Shopline began by making an unauthorized copy of Dawn, translated that unauthorized copy into a distinct programming language, after which made cosmetic changes to the Dawn code,” the lawsuit says. “From the best level of overarching organization to the smallest level of individual lines of code, the evidence of Shopline’s copying is overwhelming. The organization of Seed’s directory layout matches Dawn’s layout, using the identical names and same labels, and has an identical contents for the code. That may not be if the programs were independently developed.”
In its motion, Shopify is asking the court for a stop decision and unspecified statutory damages and legal fees. The district court has not scheduled preliminary dates for a hearing.
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