After a Canadian puzzle-maker’s design went global, a booming copycat industry pounced on her business

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After a Canadian puzzle-maker’s design went global, a booming copycat industry pounced on her business
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Lindsay Stead looks over the work space of her puzzle game business, Parkside Puzzles, in Dundas, Ont. on Dec. 21, 2024. After her moon puzzle started to trend on Google, Ms. Stead discovered counterfeit websites selling copycat versions of her puzzles.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail

When Lindsay Stead’s moon puzzle started trending on Google, the jigsaw-puzzle publisher had no idea it would be bad for business.

Her puzzle’s sudden popularity ignited after Hong Kong-based lifestyle publication Hypebeast featured it in a 2020 article, sparking demand overseas, said Ms. Stead, who’s based in Dundas, Ont. As the sole full-time employee of her small business, Four Point Puzzles, she began packing orders around the clock, grateful for the exposure and flurry of new customers.

It wasn’t until a week later, when her friend sent her an Instagram post by a strange account advertising her puzzle and using her product photography, that she realized the publicity was also causing a problem: counterfeiting.

“It was such an overwhelming thing to see,” she said. “I was quickly trying to find out who it was and how to report it.”

And it only got worse. A few days later, Ms. Stead said every fourth or fifth post on her Instagram feed was a sponsored ad featuring her moon puzzle but linking to a different strange website.

What ensued were years of turmoil as her small business dealt with hundreds of counterfeit websites, fraudulent ads and a trademark dispute that ultimately led to the closing of her company after only about four years.

In the world of puzzles and games, Ms. Stead’s story isn’t unique. Dozens of websites and posts online warn puzzle makers and hobbyists of the prevalence of inauthentic versions, and experts say as e-commerce continues to provide a breeding ground for this issue, the risk of counterfeits is something every business owner must take into account.

A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and EU Intellectual Property Office found that the volume of international trade in counterfeit and pirated products in 2019 was equal to about US$464-billion, or 2.5 per cent of world trade. In Canada, the issue is particularly prevalent owing to the country’s notoriously lax laws around the illegal practice, said Lorne Lipkus, chair of education and training at the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network.

“Our laws are the minimum that other countries set as a standard,” he said, adding that the cost of dealing with and protecting against counterfeits can be particularly consequential for small- to medium-sized businesses.

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Over about three years, Ms. Stead reported close to 800 listings on platforms, which used her brand name, photography and packaging design to sell copies of her puzzles.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail

Ms. Stead opened Four Point Puzzles’ online store in 2019, on the same day as the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. She built her business on a loan of $12,000 and had only her circular moon puzzle for sale to start, adding more planets and designs later.

On the first day, she sold hundreds of moon puzzles to customers in 39 different countries – partly thanks to an anticipatory Instagram post by online magazine Design Milk. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, interest in her puzzles grew as more people were drawn to the hobby while staying home. Then, after the Hypebeast feature, Ms. Stead said everything began spiralling out of control.

Over the span of about three years, Ms. Stead reported close to 800 listings on platforms such as Instagram, Amazon, Alibaba, Etsy and Wish, which used her brand name, photography and packaging design to sell copycat versions of her puzzles. While the picture of the moon, for example, is a publicly available image from NASA and can therefore be used by anyone, the use of Ms. Stead’s branding and product photography qualifies as copyright infringement.

Packaged in cheaply made boxes, the counterfeit puzzles were often mislabelled and contained paper-thin pieces impossible to assemble, Ms. Stead said. The worst part of discovering they existed, she added, was picturing all of the people – her potential customers – who were being duped.

“I carried the weight of that because nobody else was going to solve the problem,” she said. “It’s my product photography that was stolen. It’s my product that people are copying and trying to sell. So, it’s up to me to figure this out.”

At the beginning, she said deciphering how to report copyright infringement on each individual online platform was overwhelming. “I thought I was doing it correctly, but none of them were being taken down.”

She hired a friend to help investigate the process, and now keeps an extensive spreadsheet tracking every infringement, the date she reported it, the date it was removed, her reference number for each report and the website or e-mail each e-commerce site requires people to use to report such infringements.

David Manga, founder of Cobble Hill Puzzles in Victoria, said he had similar problems to Ms. Stead and decided to hire Red Points, a brand-protection software company that monitors fake ads and then works to have the linked websites taken down.

“People do still get scammed, just not as many,” he said, adding that the service, and the fees he must pay for it, will continue to be a necessity for his company as long as the ads persist.

The death blow to Ms. Stead’s business came in the spring of 2020 when she was notified that Shanghai-based firm, Shanghai Ruxin Trading Co. Ltd, had applied to trademark “Fourpoint Puzzles.”

Stunned, she was advised to hire an international law firm to fight the application, which would prevent her from printing and selling her puzzles in China. Between legal fees and filing for trademarks elsewhere to help her case, she estimates she spent more than $18,000. But about a year later, she found out she had lost the legal battle, and the right to use her company name in China.

“That’s something that, to this day, I’ll never understand,” she said.

The Globe and Mail attempted to contact Shanghai Ruxin Trading Co. Ltd, but the number provided on the company’s registration report was not in service.

That company was one of at least three that applied to trademark Ms. Stead’s business name, according to trademark registration data from Shanghai-based GoodWill Business Management Agency.

The cost of trademarking Four Point Puzzles, and uncertainty about whether it would succeed, held her back from registering her company initially, Ms. Stead said.

In Canada, it costs around $478 to register a trademark for the first class of goods or services to which it applies, through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s website. But that doesn’t include lawyers’ fees, which Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network chair Mr. Lipkus said often brings the amount into the thousands.

“For small enterprises, that can be a considerable startup cost,” he said.

To file and register a trademark in Canada, China, the United States, EU and United Kingdom, Ms. Stead said she has been quoted between $18,000 and $20,000.

Despite that cost, Lisa Sim, a partner at the law firm Miller Thomson, said small- to medium-sized businesses should prioritize registering their intellectual-property rights if they can afford to because it could save them money if issues arise in the future.

“It really is a matter of putting the public on notice that you have those rights and then being able to enforce them,” she said.

After closing up shop in 2023, Ms. Stead said she had time to reflect on the relative success of Four Point Puzzles and decided she still wanted to follow her passion for running a puzzle business. In November, she reopened under the name Parkside – an homage to Ms. Stead’s hometown high school in Dundas.

The first task on her to-do list? Applying for a trademark.

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