Latest update: September 2023 | by Lili

 

What is Shopify

 

Table of contents

• What does Shopify do
• How does it work
• IP issues on Shopify
• Online brand protection on Shopify
• Conclusion

If your brand doesn’t operate its own webshop, you may not have come across Shopify. But the Canadian company has become a major player in e-Commerce, so much so that even brands who don’t work with them need to be aware of Shopify’s capabilities.

 

Especially when it comes to the protection of their IP rights.

 
What does Shopify do

Founded in 2006 and based in Ottawa, Shopify is an e-Commerce provider that allows sellers to build and operate compelling online stores.

 

The company provides a full range of services to its clients, which means that besides the webshop itself, Shopify helps businesses with branding, marketing, payments, customer service, inventory, fulfillment, shipping, sales analytics, and much more.

 

Screenshot of shopify.com displaying Shopify’s solutions
 

Since businesses are able to pick and choose the exact solutions they need, Shopify is suitable for vendors large and small, local and international. The e-Commerce platform provides three pricing options ranging from 24 to 289 euros per month, making it available for all kinds of budgets.

 

No wonder that Shopify is massively successful. Around 4.36 million webshops use Shopify globally, most of them from the US, the UK and Australia. In 2022, the platform has processed $79.5 billion worth of orders from 700 million customers worldwide. In the first half of 2023 alone, the platform has generated a revenue of $3.202 billion. 

 
Learn all about other popular platforms like Shopify!

How does it work

Shopify provides various guides and tutorials about setting up shop on the platform and how its clients can make the best of it.

 

Businesses need to create an account and upload their basic data, like business name and address, as well as tax and billing information, currency, payment and shipping options. Once this is done, you can focus on creating your actual webshop.

 

Shopify offers over a hundred themes and customisable options for your shop, allowing you to shape it according to your needs and brand image.

 

Screenshot of themes.shopify.com displaying customisable webshop themes
 

According to its vendors, Shopify is secure and reliable, easy to use, provides great tech support and customer service around the clock, works well with both desktop and mobile versions of shops, has great customisation options and offers a wide range of business tools to its customers.

 

Screenshot of partakefoods.com, a random webshop operated by Shopify
 

However, there’s another side of the coin, because these excellent features can be used by anyone who pays the monthly fee. Anyone, including fraudsters.

 
IP issues on Shopify

Although Shopify has an IP protection policy and promises to take steps once it receives a well-founded notice of a copyright or trademark violation, the company doesn’t habitually check all of its clients’ webshops for IP infringements.

 

Which means that fraudsters can carry on their activities uninterrupted until someone takes it upon themselves to let Shopify know about them.

 

And here’s the worst part: due to Shopify’s excellent services, it’s very hard to recognise a fraudulent shop right away. In pre-Shopify times, fraudsters usually lacked the skills and patience to build a nice webshop. The resulting weak designs and fishy texts were red flags for many shoppers, often revealing the true nature of the shop.

 

Well, thanks to Shopify, fraudsters can now create flawless, compelling webshops in no time, making them much more suitable to dupe customers. And, since Shopify is not checking its clients’ webshops, fraudsters can operate as long as somebody goes the extra mile and reports them. But who will that be?

 
Online brand protection on Shopify

Well, globaleyez will be happy to take on that duty. In fact, we’ve already done so countless times, when protecting the IP rights of our clients.

 

Our domain monitoring service, for instance, is perfect for detecting fraudulent webshops, whether they're operated by Shopify or any other service provider. Besides the domain name, we check meta descriptions, meta keywords and html content as well for brand names, product names, or any other keyword you desire.

 

In addition, our image monitoring service discovers IP infringing imagery, including fraudulent ads and product pictures fraudsters have stolen from your brand, as well as similar images they created themselves that imitate your original ones.

 

Since fraudsters often use social media to lure consumers to their shops, we also recommend a round of social media monitoring to detect connections between fraudulent accounts and webshops.

 

Finally, should you wish for us to proceed, we will enforce your rights and demand the takedown of any infringing content we found, like imagery, domains, social media accounts and even entire webshops. Our excellent network of connections with industry players, including Shopify allows us to act fast and effectively to protect your rights.

 
Conclusion

Whether or not you’re using Shopify, chances are that fraudsters offer fake or grey market versions of your products via their webshops powered by this versatile e-Commerce platform.

 

Don’t let them get away with it. Contact us and let us devise a strategy together against IP infringements on Shopify and anywhere else online.