What you need to know about the SHEIN lawsuits

A requirement to file a RICO claim is that the offending party is not just an individual or business but a criminal organisation, as the suit claims Shein’s alleged infringement activity is ‘committed not by a single entity, but by a de-facto association of entities.’

Artists Krista Perry, Larissa Blintz, and Jay Baron are accusing the company of intentionally selling copies of their intellectual property, including their prints and designs.

They are seeking unspecified damages and want injunctive relief to prevent further racketeering activity.

Alleging that SHEIN ‘knowingly committed criminal copyright infringement, and played its role with full knowledge of the overarching criminal copyright infringement it participates in,’ Perry, Blintz, and Baron believe it did so with a ‘secretive algorithm’ to identify trending art it could then replicate.

‘The brand has made billions by creating a secretive algorithm that astonishingly determines nascent fashion trends – and by coupling it with a corporate structure, including production and fulfilment schemes, that are perfectly executed to grease the wheels of the algorithm, including its unsavoury and illegal aspects,’ they argue in the lawsuit.

‘SHEIN’s confusing corporate structure allows the company to avoid liability in the case of intellectual property infringement. The brand’s first line of defence when facing a copyright or trademark cease and desist is removing the product from its sites with blaming the misconduct on another actor.’ This, they say, will not happen again.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Sucharita Kodali (principal analyst at advisory firm Forrester) who deems this undeniably strong convergence of often-disparate issues – environment, human rights, intellectual property, data privacy, trade policy and US-China relations – a ‘perfect storm’ that could see SHEIN shut down and liquidated within the next year.

‘I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance SHEIN is forced into more disclosure and higher costs,’ she tells Vogue Business. ‘If that happens, the company will slowly die on the vine. No one wants expensive, poor-quality merchandise.’