Shopify sues Shopline, alleges ‘wholesale copying’ of storefront template tech

Photo credit: Shopline

Shopify has sued Singapore-headquartered Shopline for allegedly copying Dawn, the technology behind the former’s customizable storefront templates. The move comes a month after Shopline launched Seed, its own customizable storefront template, in the US.

In the lawsuit, Shopify said that Shopline is “distributing a thinly disguised knockoff” that still carries “damning evidence of Shopline’s wholesale copying.” One piece of evidence is that the name “Shopify” still appears in multiple instances of Seed’s code.

“To create Seed, Shopline started by making an unauthorized copy of Dawn, translated that unauthorized copy into a different programming language, and then made largely cosmetic changes to the Dawn code,” Shopify alleged in its 17-page complaint, which was filed to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Canada-headquartered ecommerce enabler further calls the evidence “overwhelming,” from the organization of Seed’s directory layout all the way to the developer pages, which are manuals to help web developers and merchants design their storefronts.

Having launched in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Shopline has since expanded to Southeast Asia and, more recently, to Australia and the UK. Its investors include 500 Startups, Ardent Capital, and the Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, a nonprofit initiative from Alibaba Group.

In 2022, Shopline was acquired by Nasdaq-listed Chinese livestreaming platform Joyy in a US$183 million deal. The acquisition was followed by a host of departures among its Southeast Asia-based employees, including all of the region’s country managers, as well as Shopline’s co-founders.

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