Shopify says it has removed most pirated content publishers are suing it for hosting

OTTAWA — Shopify Inc. says it has taken down the vast majority of content that five textbook publishers say is pirated and infringes on their trademarks.

The Ottawa-based e-commerce company says less than two per cent of its merchants who have been targeted with takedown requests from Macmillan Learning, Cengage Learning Inc., Elsevier Inc., McGraw Hill LLC and Pearson Education Inc. remain active on the Shopify platform.

Shopify revealed this information in documents filed this week in a Virginia court, where it is being sued by the publishers for allegedly hosting merchants who illegally reproduce and sell the publishers’ textbooks, test banks and other manuals. 

The company says it denies all of the publisher’s claims, did not cause them harms, losses or damages and feels the case against it will fail because it has acted on takedown requests.

Shopify says responding to the publishers has been “no small feat” because they have submitted more than 5,000 takedown requests or trademark infringement notices under the U.S.’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The company says it has reviewed more than 50,000 unique URLs involving more than 1,750 merchants submitted by the publishers between October 2018 and January 2022. 

More than 90 per cent of the URLs have been removed and 95 per cent were taken down within five business days.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)

The Canadian Press