Temu faces Shein lawsuit over copyright infringement, class action claims over data privacy

Temu lawsuits overview: 

• Who: Online marketplace Temu has been involved in several lawsuits recently, including a pair of class action lawsuits. 
• Why: The complaints involve claims Temu failed to protect and stole customer data and pilfered copyrighted images from competitor Shein to use as promotional photos on its website. 
• Where: The lawsuits were filed in New York and Illinois federal courts and the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales.

Online marketplace Temu faced a trio of complaints recently involving claims the company failed to protect and stole customer data and pilfered copyrighted photos from competitor Shein. 

Temu is a digital marketplace headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, that is owned by the Irish-based Chinese company PDD Holdings. 

Temu fails to protect personal, financial user information, class action says

A consumer filed a class action lawsuit against Temu in September over claims the online marketplace uses relaxed security policies that allegedly enable the widespread and systematic theft of its customers’ personally identifiable and financial information.

Temu is accused of failing to comply with “reasonable security standards” that, if put in place, would be able to adequately protect the data of its customers. 

The consumer behind the class action lawsuit argues Temu allegedly declines to put such policies in place to gain “short-term and fleeting benefits,” such as saving on compliance costs. 

“Defendant’s actions did not come close to meeting the standards of commercially reasonable steps that should be taken to protect customers’ personal identifying information,” the Temu class action lawsuit states. 

The plaintiff wants to represent a nationwide class and a consumer fraud multistate class of individuals who registered for a Temu account at any time since July 2022. 

Temu lawsuit claims app collects more user data than necessary

A group of consumers filed a class action lawsuit against Temu earlier this month over claims it collects more data from its users than is necessary and in a greater amount than is disclosed. 

The group argues experts determined Temu built tools into the shopping app that “execute virulent and dangerous malware and spyware activities on user devices.” 

The consumers claim experts found Temu put the tools in “purposefully and intentionally,” and, in an alleged effort to continue stealing data, have “gone to great lengths” to conceal these alleged privacy violations from their users.

“According to these experts, Temu collects user data beyond what is necessary for an online shopping app, including biometric information and data from users of the app,” the Temu class action states. 

The plaintiffs want to represent a nationwide class of consumers who used the Temu platform, along with subclasses of consumers from Illinois, California and Virginia. 

Temu disputes rival Shein’s claims it used copyrighted images as promotional photos 

Shein filed a lawsuit against Temu in September over claims it improperly used thousands of its copyrighted images as promotional photos on the Temu website. 

Temu responded to the claims last month, arguing it was unaware Shein copyrighted the images in dispute while acknowledging some website images were “identical” to Shein’s. 

However, Temu argued it does not know the copyright for the estimated 30 million images it uses on its website that are spread across about 4 million product listings. 

Shein also accused Temu of altering the copyrighted images to conceal that they were allegedly improperly used and sent a letter to the company in June that included examples of more than 8,000 URLs of allegedly copyrighted photos. 

Temu claims any alterations were done by third-party sellers and not the company itself and that it was not given an adequate amount of time to review all of the contents of the letter. 

Shein secured an emergency temporary restraining order against Temu in July over its copyright claims, with the latter arguing last month the decision was only a “temporary measure” and not proof it was guilty of infringement. 

Temu filed its own lawsuit against Shein in July over claims the latter tried to bully it out of the online marketplace through an alleged campaign of intimidation, threats and false assertions of infringement. 

Do you use Temu? Let us know in the comments.

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