Source: The Guardian

A 20-year-old designer, Ryan Billington, has initiated copyright infringement proceedings in the Brisbane federal circuit court against Shopify and two websites he alleges copied substantially all of his poster designs. The websites, described as ghost stores, are said to have imitated Billington’s site, with the operator claiming these sites delivered only electronic jpeg files to customers instead of physical posters.

The lawsuit represents an attempt to hold a global e-commerce platform accountable for hosting ghost stores that may misrepresent their locations and products. Billington runs his online poster business from New Zealand and characterized the defendant websites as similar to those previously identified by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as problematic. The legal documents name clutchposters.com and audibleposters.com as the allegedly infringing sites.