S04E161 CopyCatch to Stop eCommerce Infringement Profitably with Alan Li & Nicholas Lee

Copycats do not just steal a product. They steal momentum, cashflow, and confidence. When Alan Li’s e-commerce brand went viral during COVID, hundreds of counterfeit and knockoff listings appeared across Amazon and other marketplaces, undercutting price and pulling sales away fast. The worst part was not only the revenue drop, but watching stolen photos and even cause marketing get reused by strangers who faced zero real consequences. 

We sit down with Alan and his attorney, Nicholas Lee, an intellectual property and business lawyer with more than 20 years of experience, to explain what actually works when DMCA takedowns turn into whack-a-mole. Nick breaks down Schedule A cases in plain English: how one lawsuit can name dozens or hundreds of online infringers, why these cases often focus on foreign sellers, and how tools like injunctions and potential asset freezes can create real deterrence. We also dig into how to think about an enforceable IP portfolio, including trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets, so your brand has teeth when it is time to act. 

Then we get practical about speed and scale. Alan and Nick explain how Copycatch uses AI and automation to find sellers, expand target lists across platforms, and build consistent evidence packages that can cut early-stage legwork dramatically, helping firms take on more IP enforcement work and helping brands protect future sales. If you care about e-commerce brand protection, Amazon counterfeit enforcement, and AI legal tech, this conversation lays out the strategy. 

Reach Alan & Nick here:
https://copycatch.ai
alan@copycatch.ai
nick@copycatch.ai

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Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins 
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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introductions

SPEAKER_00 0:52

The Leadership in the Law Podcast is starting you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guests, Alan Lee and Nicholas Lee, to the show today. Today's guests bring two sides of the same fight: the business owner who lived the problem and the attorney who helped solve it at scale. Alan is an entrepreneur who experienced what many fast-growing e-commerce brands fear most. After his company went viral, he watched nearly half of his revenue disappear to copycats undercutting him on platforms like Amazon. When traditional takedown methods failed, he took a different approach. Going to court, shutting down hundreds of infringers, and recovering significant damages. That experience led him to co-found Copycatch, where he now helps business owners protect their products and brands from online infringement. He's joined by his attorney, Nicholas Lee, an intellectual property and business lawyer with more than 20 years of experience. Nick advises clients on patterns, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets and is widely known for his work in high-stakes IP enforcement, especially Schedule A cases against online infringers. With a background as an analytical chemist and extensive litigation experience, he brings a unique mix of technical depth and practical results during strategy. Together, they offer a powerful perspective on how businesses and law firms can fight back against longline infringement and turn it into a real opportunity. I'm excited to have you here today, guys. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about the journey that got you here.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah, maybe I'll lead off and then make it on. Yeah, as you mentioned in the intro, my wife and I

Going Viral Then Getting Copied

SPEAKER_02 2:45

started with this e-commerce business selling these plant pillows. This is a succulent pillow, and this is like a plant, a leaf pillow. Not your non-standard square pillows, right?

SPEAKER_04 2:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

And we went viral during COVID because everyone was stuck at home. And all of a sudden, I want to make my space a little bit more lively. And so our business took off like wildfire, right? Maybe that's not a good analogy. Right after that, we just saw like hundreds of copycat listings pop up everywhere, right? Oh, when you Google it, still today, this is still a problem. We're still fighting. I'll Google on Amazon, Walmart, Timu, eBay, every platform you can think of, right? It's just been duplicated, right? The first wave, people just straight up store our image, right? Or I'm not even talking, just straight up just taking our image from our site and just selling a counterfeit product. And some of the images were taken with my wife's bodily parts, like her hands, her feet.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

And they just took that. The worst offense is that we donate a portion of our profits to trees.org, which helps to plant trees. And we planted almost this by the end of this year, we have planted over 400,000 trees. Wow. Amazing. They even took that in their marketing. And initially, I sent out, like any e-commerce seller who's not very well versed in IP enforcement strategies. You do the DMCA takedown, you take down the first wave, then they realize, okay, this is then how you're basically giving them the blueprint as to how to modify their listings to not get taken down. Okay. So they come back, they created their own kind of knockoffs, took out the infringing elements, right? And uh yeah, and over the last three, four years, I've just seen my sales decline. And at some point, we were like, man, maybe we should shut down the business. That was like really affecting us emotionally. And luckily, just we didn't give up through just persistence and just kept trying to find solutions to deal with this problem. I was able to connect with Nick, who is a hero of small business owners, who saw the case for what it is, which is infringement, and took a look at our IP portfolio and saw that we had a good a good claim and decided to help us on a contingency, right? Because there was just so many, there were just so many at when we first started in 2024. And last it is, yeah, it's almost been almost two years. And if I had been working together, I saw what he was doing was very impactful and how AI could help dramatically lower the cost of bringing these cases to trial. And we've just been working together ever since Ivan trying to implement AI into his practice, and we're taking out more cases now than ever because of it. And now we're just ready to talk about the solution, right? Both on the brand side and for the legal side for the attorneys that are listening to this with clients that are that need to basically go after multiple infringers and once you. With that said, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:55

Okay. Nick?

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Yeah, like you said in the intro, I've been an IP litigator for the last 22 years. Before Schedule A started becoming a thing, my litigation was basically one versus one, a plaintiff and a defendant. But with the uh the explosion with e-commerce, now you're seeing so many counterfeiters or infringers that are out there. And I get calls all the time from my clients or referrals complaining about hey, my sales are declining because so-and-so is infringing, and they're cutting their price so that they're losing sales. Those are all the concerns that the clients with IP have. And the Schedule A was really started with major brands like Nike and you name it, but it evolved into just anybody with IP who's able to, who was willing to enforce against multiple infringers, and that's where I come in, and that's how I met Alan. And like he said before, it involves a lot of work because there's so many defendants that we're trying to bring all together in one lawsuit. But with Alan's help and with the advent of AI, now we're able to cut down the initial legwork almost to 90%.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

And so it's a significant reduction in time, and that enables me to be able to bring cases a lot quicker so that it's it helps the clients that way they can enforce it more promptly so that their sales, there's no disruption in sales. Yeah, so it's a win-win for both of us. I know, Alan, we've took control over the marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and so forth. And for me, obviously, getting my name out there, and there are more and more e-commerce business owners are interested in getting their IP enforced, and it's always a win-win.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

We also help advise e-commerce owners what type of IP to register, because most people honestly don't know anything about IP, just like me, right? Yeah, these were multi-million dollar lessons that had I met Nick five years ago, would have been completely prevented. And so we advise the clients a lot on registering the IP that have teeth when it comes to actual enforcement. So I just want to add that in as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

So, Alan, I want to ask you, when this happened, what did that feel like in real time? So you've got a listing up there. I know it's horrible emotionally, but how

The Emotional Cost Of Counterfeits

SPEAKER_01 8:37

did you find it's happening? Did you just notice your sales wrote down and you start looking? Did someone say, Hey, dude, there's a there's 14 others up here. What makes you unique? What did that feel like?

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Back then we were this was like very early on, right? And when something starts work early on in the business, you get really excited. You start telling everybody, right? And then your friends that go on Amazon and they're like, Hey, by the way, I found this copycat is selling your product for half the price, right? Then you go on Amazon, then you start like you Google your product, right? And then you just see I kid you not, back then it was like hundreds. Now, obviously, we've taken down a ton, but back then it was like hundreds, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Back in the day, it was just eBay was the only place that your the copycats would be, they'd be on eBay, but now there's so many platforms.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

There's so many platforms, right? And uh you just put your blood, sweat, and tears into this product. I still remember the days where we're like getting fabric samples shipped to us and was like feeling it and looking at colors, like this was real work that went into creating this.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

It's a labor of love. You created something you really loved and wanted to grow, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:45

And it was especially difficult because this is not my only business, right? Like my wife quit her job to start this business, and we were building our family while bringing this business together, right? So it was like as a man, it it felt bad. It felt like I was not doing my job, like protecting my family, and uh it's all kind of feelings, right? It's depression, it's anger, it's hopelessness. Because you just didn't have well. I'm just one guy, right? And this is essentially like uh organized crime, if you will. It's like a cartel, basically. And the platforms don't do anything because they have no incentives to enforce, they just want they get sales, they get sales, so they have no incentive to enforce. So then when you try the status quo, which is DMCA, and it doesn't work, what the hell are you gonna do? Yeah. So that's yeah, it sucks.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

So, Nicholas, from the legal side, when a client comes to you with that kind of loss, how do you begin to quantify the damage

Measuring Damages And Case ROI

SPEAKER_01 10:42

and bill the case?

SPEAKER_03 10:44

It's typically fine, they know who the competitors are or they know who the infringers are. And like what Alan said, they just do an initial quick search, and there's a list of infringers that are out there and they don't know what to do because of the volume. Generally, that's how we know how big the infringement is, and then I try to come up with the plan to start a lawsuit. But with the AI and with copycatch, now we can do that work for the client. Client, in addition to the information the client briefs to us, now we can actually update that with additional infringers that we find so it becomes more complete. Whereas before we would launch one lawsuit, and then the next day we find that there's additional infringers that are out there that we didn't catch or the client didn't catch, and we end up having to file a second lawsuit. But here, we don't really have to worry about that because now copycatch allows us to essentially have a complete list of infringers in the beginning so that we can actually get it started.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

We have tools internally that tries to estimate the sales. Like on Amazon, particularly, sometimes it will state how many units are sold. Right? So it's through all of kind of data available and also using these sales estimate tools and to put together an estimate of what the potential case ROI is.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

You can see how many they've sold as well as how many you've sold, and then calculate what your sales projection should have been so you get real damages.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Exactly. Exactly. And on the brand side, on the client side, a lot of times clients they care about collecting the settlement, but what they really care about is the infringers being criminally removed and being criminally deterred to take action again. Because a lot of these people are just they're just bad actors, right? They're just repeating it for others. Nick and I are dealing with this one bad actor right now. We finally took him down. And we this is crazy, right? Because we sued him not once, not twice, three times, and he's still doing it, right? So it's still brazen, it's it's crazy, right? The real benefit that the clients have it's protecting sales that should have been to that should have gone to them in the first place. That's the real ROI of the case, which is now you have a real mo around your business, and you can actually protect that, and you can protect the sales that are going to come to you in the future. The settlement is just a little bit icing on the cake. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Exactly. Nick, what do you think in so many IP attorneys just overlook schedule A cla cases, even though the demand there is clearly there?

SPEAKER_03 13:30

It's that's a really good question. So typically, this type of work is based on a contingency basis. And because of the amount of different different defendants that are out there, the initial legwork, just the cost of starting a lawsuit is very expensive for attorney or law firms. For example, before I started my own practice, I was at another firm where we had about 600 attorneys, and the hourly rates was very expensive. And for me to start a contingent case like this would involve at least one or two associates and at least two paralegals and myself, and these are all based on a contingency basis. And although we we hope that so there's a lot of risk. Yeah. And there's a lot of overhead. And law firms are generally, although they're interested, they're only looking for that slam dunk type of a case. So it's really hard for clients and potential clients to find a firm or attorney who would be inclined to take on this type of cases because there just there's a significant risk involved, and not a lot of law firms would actually want to touch it. And especially IP is so complicated. It's not just trademark for copyright, but it also patents. And patent side gets more complicated and there's more risk and more work. And so that's why there's a little bit of a pushback from the law firm side because of the business end of it.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

So for those who aren't familiar, can you walk us through what a Schedule A case actually looks like, especially how one case can evolve into a hundred or more defendants?

SPEAKER_03 16:15

Yeah, because of the advancement of e-commerce, and a lot of these sellers, believe it or not, are all foreign. They're all coming from China. And because before, because there are foreign companies, they felt that, hey, you can't really touch me. I'm in China. And you can do whatever you want, but you can't touch me. But with Schedule A, what allowed us to do is we can actually bring a lawsuit naming a group of defendants, be it 10, 50, 100. So it will be a large amount of defendants that we can all bring at one time. And that so basically schedule A comes from the Schedule A is basically the list of defendants

Schedule A Lawsuits Explained Simply

SPEAKER_03 16:57

that's listed in Schedule A. And so that's why they call it the Schedule A compliance. And so that's what Schedule A is, and that Schedule A is specifically directed to foreign sellers, in particular Chinese sellers, and it enables us to bring a lawsuit and get an injunction and possibly get an asset freeze of their account so that it effectively stops them from doing any business and transferring the money to their bank account in China. So it just gives the plaintiff, the small mom and pop stores, an advantage as to try to enforce their IP as well as try to get it monetized and settle the cases.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

I love that. I love that. And Alan, how does that compare with the traditional you called it a whack-a-mole kind of approach for the DCM DMCA takedowns? What changes for a brand once they go this route?

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Yeah, I mean, it's really a day and night difference, right? I think DMCA is really trap for brands because it leaves the enforcement decision based on the platforms, and as we discussed already, the platforms have no incentive to enforce, right? They might enforce a little bit in the beginning, but in the case where I was trying to send down like hundreds of takedown notices, after a while they just stop responding to you, right? Because they just know you're just not gonna do anything about it, right? What are you gonna do? Are you gonna do Amazon?

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

So and it if you're serious about protecting your client's brand with teeth, like you need to take legal actions because there's no consequence for DMCA, right? Sure, a listing might get taked down, but guess what? They'll just spin up another one, right? Yeah, exactly.

Why DMCA Takedowns Fail

SPEAKER_02 18:43

And that's what a lot of these infringers do already, is what they do is these guys are smart too. When they plan to infringe on a product, they will just create multiple duplicate listings of the same product, just because they know they will get taken down. And it's you don't get any money back at brand, right? And there's no consequences, it doesn't deter them, right? And you're actually weakening your case because now you're revealing like you're telling them to take away the evidence that they're infringing, right? So that is literally the worst thing you could do as a client, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

And thinking about it, it feels like okay, you've got a hundred people infringing on your product, they're selling knockoffs. Cat copycatch can actually go get the names and contacts of those people so you can pull a lawsuit on them.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Yeah, so what we do is we go through a process where we take the client's list and we expand that list out across multiple platforms, right? And then by I think there is some law that has to identify who the sellers are on these third-party platforms. And then we so then we figure out, like on Amazon, for example, nobody ever goes there, but there's a little sold by link. You can go in there and see who is actually shipping you this product, and from there, if you scroll down a little bit, you'll be able to see the detailed business information, right? Okay, and so we are able to extract that as part of the evidence package, and we also then will add the product to carb, take a screenshot of the checkout page to show that it's readily available to ship, right? To to cross-interstate commerce. And however, before AI, right, I think most law firms would just try to find some virtue assistance to do this. However, the issue is you get inconsistent evidence, and sometimes, you know, we're humans, right? We're gonna make mistakes because when you run through hundreds of listings, you're inevitably going to make mistakes by manually copy and pasting, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Yeah, and forgetting a screenshot, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

And the opposing counsels, they'll sniff that out, right? If they're smart, if they're good, right? These cases, like Nick mentioned, right? These are there's risk, right? Because we got a post bond, right? And you want the evidence to be 100% accurate every time, right? So that these things are eliminated, these types of risks are eliminated from the series. And we help attorneys, we can help attorneys do that with with the tools that we build internally.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Okay, so you've both touched on automation. So copycatch, how does copycatch change the way that these cases are built and managed? Is it the that they you can actually find all of these people and culminate the data together? Is it taking images and those screenshots you're talking about and actually building a lot of your case for you?

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Yeah, exactly. To initiate the case, you obviously will need the evidence package, right? And the evidence package is very granular, right? Because it involves screenshotting the products and sometimes it involves screenshotting just different parts of the page. An agent that we build is specialized in screenshotting different parts of the page based on what the prompt is or based on what the evidence needs, right? And then goes through the process of figuring out what the sellers are, extracting the seller information, which is the data that the uh

Copycatch And AI Evidence Automation

SPEAKER_02 22:10

that you need to present to the court to get to the order in order to enforce on the platforms, and also then going through using the browser to click to add the card, go to the checkout page, take a screenshot of the checkout page, right? So to do that manually it would be cost efficient, it would make these cases not profitable for really anybody, right? The brand or the attorneys, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:35

Yeah. Let me if I can add, timing is always an issue because some of these sellers, they just sell out and then close that account and then they move on to next. And before we didn't have this automation, we were missing those infringers because the time that it took us to get those evidence ready, because it was all done manually. And one time, you know, when even though we have the evidence ready, we find out some of those sellers are no longer available because they sold out or they closed the account. Whereas now the evidence gets collected, it it's populated into just at one time. And then it now it's basically instant. So we know that these are all live sellers who are actually selling the products. And so we're not missing any infringers. We're missing the time.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

So you're saying some of these infringers will just come in with a really popular product, blast it for say a month, and then di ditch.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of these guys are just trying to they just have a general store. Like they don't have a theme to the store. It's just a bunch of stuff. Just whatever they can find or drop ship to sell. And so the other issue is sometimes the court requires the evidence to be timely. So if you took the screenshot three months ago manually, and it's taking these three months to build a case, when the court reviews the evidence package, we'll say, This looks like it's outdated. We don't know if this is still the case or not. And then you have just wasted a lot of time and effort. We're really trying to internally with my brand, I think Nate and I have I've gone the process down, feel good now where where we can essentially bring a lawsuit plus the package. Once we find the target, once we finalize targets, we can basically initiate the lawsuits within two days. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

And is this something you're consistently scanning for your brand? Those are beautiful pillows. Is that something that you're consistently doing to protect your IP?

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah, definitely. Obviously, like the reason why we've gotten so good at it is because we've had the runs with my own product. And so we've worked through all the kinks each time. And I think it's unheard of to be able to be able to bring a lawsuit within two days, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

With that much data, that is crazy.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

With that much data, right? Yeah. The lawsuits have gotten smaller each time because obviously the initial one that's really where you make the big catch, right? Where you remove the bulk of it. And then it's just like tail end, right? And the suits get smaller and smaller. But it doesn't really change the process, right? But if a client came to us today and had a hundred entrances, 200 listings, we would still do we would still run the same process where we have the agents prepare the evidence, and we have another agent that assists with drafting the documents, and then Nick does the final red line of sign-all. And then we go.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

I love that. I love that. So Nick, if a firm wanted to build this into a real practice area that was thinking about that using copycatch to help them organize everything, not just a one-off case, what would be the first step for them to get started?

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Obviously, we want to be able to get our names out there and uh feel reach feel free to reach out at copycatch. I think our email address is I want to correct me if I'm wrong, but they're available online. It's Allen at copycatch.ai or Nick at copycatchai. And also I've got my own law practice. It's wall where it's nslee at nslegal-ip.com. It's most important thing is if you're gonna do e-commerce, you got you want to make sure that you just have your brand or ideal protected. You want to be able to have a pen, trademark, or copyright of some sort. Without that, it's gonna be very difficult for you to thrive in the this such very competitive e-commerce marketplace. And so I know we have a few cut potential customers who've inquired as to their product. We're more than happy to

How Firms Start A Schedule A Practice

SPEAKER_03 26:38

advise them as to what type of IP that they should have gotten or they should still collect you get now. So we'll we can walk them from the beginning and and then basically just uh educate them as to how to compete in this marketplace by having your own IP so that you can enforce that IP and be more competitive.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

On the law firm side, I'm sure plenty of attorneys listening to this podcast probably has one or two clients that are doing e-commerce that are probably struggling with this problem. And previously it might not have been uh profitable to take these cases on contingency because of the pre-filing investigation work that is required. However, if they would like to add an additional revenue channel to the firms through Schedule A practice and want to implement the same AI system that we're implementing ourselves, we'd be happy to help them consult. Or they could they could also offload the work to us in terms of building the targeted list and doing the uh the evidence collection part. We even have document templates that we could use. Obviously, not gonna be for free. Yeah, yeah, of course, but to make Nick mentioned, right? It's a an interesting untouched space because you've got the Fortune 500 companies that are due to Schedule A. Of course, they're gonna be doing it, right? And they don't really care about the cost. However, 99.99% of the business in the US is small business, right? And so there's a huge unmet need in terms of IP enforcement for the small business owners. I think it's worth taking another another look.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

I think this is a especially with the growth of obviously Amazon, the TikTok shop and Shopify, all these different things. Almost every ad I see on a TikTok is a knockoff of something because it's a ridiculously cheap price. I saw a Samsung phone for $39.99.

SPEAKER_04 28:45

Really?

SPEAKER_01 28:46

So it does sound like you guys have solved a massive problem that can help small businesses and help law firms add a revenue string. And so it sounds like you guys have made a great tool, and I wish you the best of luck. I know people listening to us are going to want to connect with you and learn more about it. So can you give us again those Earls and how they can reach out to you?

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yeah, the easiest way is just go to copycash.ai, that's our website, and there's a button there where you can book a consultation or just book a call with uh with me on Nix Screener. Because obviously we need to make sure NixTime is protected, wise reused. But so yeah, our emails are Alan Y L A N at copycash.ai and Nick, Nick at copytash.ai.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Perfect. We'll make sure that those are in the show notes. Guys, this has been a very interesting conversation, and I'm so excited to hear what you've done and how you're protecting small businesses IP. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Thanks for having us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

That's a wrap on today's episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Before you go, I want to make sure that you know about something that could be a real game changer for your firm. If you've been doing the work, showing up, serving clients, but your marketing still isn't producing the caseload you know you deserve. That's exactly the problem Law Marketing Zone was built to solve. My team and I work exclusively with law firms, and we don't do cookie cutter. We build a strategy around your practice, your market, and your goals. More high-quality leads, better cases, less stress, and more profit. Head over to LawmarketingZone.com/slash book a call and book your free case growth session today. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next episode.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing

Resources Marketing Offer And Closing

SPEAKER_00 30:31

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