We know that Chinese e-commerce fast-fashion brand has been making the news for all the right and wrong reasons from quite a long time now. It was earlier seen that Shein became very famous because of its quirky designs and trendy statement clothes that everyone loved. However, it was later revealed that the company was accused of ripoff from designers who had their designs stolen and printed on clothes by Shein and being sold without any compensation or even credit to the original artists. To this day, Shein denies that they have ripped off any designs which makes it even more worrisome for the designers.
After months of accusations, the designers have decided to sue the Chinese e-commerce brand Shein and filed a lawsuit against the company. In the lawsuit, the designers have accused Shein of ripping off their designs “over and over again, as part of a long and continuous pattern of racketeering” and these designers include Krista Perry, Larissa Martinez and Jay Baron. They have also accused that Shein’s “design ‘algorithm’ could not work without generating the kinds of exact copies that can greatly damage an independent designer’s career—especially because Shein’s artificial intelligence is smart enough to misappropriate the pieces with the greatest commercial potential.” These designers also seek a jury trial against Shein and say that the e-commerce brand’s “misconduct is committed not by a single entity, but by a de-facto association of entities.”
The designers have also said that RICO, which stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, applies to Shein because it was created to “address the misconduct of culpable individual cogs in a larger enterprise,” and that is what Shein is doing, according to the lawsuit. TechCrunch adds that they reached out to Shein for a reply on this lawsuit and the company said that it “takes such claims seriously. The firm added that it will “vigorously defend” itself”. However, it can be clearly seen in the lawsuit from side-by-side comparisons that there are blatant ripoffs of designers work and those are still up on Shein’s website which means the case from these designers and their lawsuit seems to be very strong right now.
