How to Remove Fakes from Douyin and Douyin Store
Douyin dominates short-video commerce in China, funneling hundreds of millions of daily users directly into live shopping streams and integrated storefronts. That scale draws counterfeiters. Fake listings, cloned brand accounts, and fraudulent live sellers exploit the platform’s discovery engine to reach consumers before legitimate brands do.
About Douyin
Douyin operates as the original version of TikTok, and the version still used in mainland China. It's owned and operated by the same parent company, and like TikTok Shop, users also find a fully-integrated ecommerce store in the platform. The huge user base and ecommerce flow make Douyin a crucial channel for protecting your brand from infringements.
Parent Company
ByteDance
Founded
September 2016, China
Users
700M+ monthly active users
Headquarters
Beijing, China
Douyin takeaways
Douyin reaches over 700 million monthly active users in China alone, making it one of the most concentrated consumer audiences on any single platform. That density of engaged shoppers, many of them purchasing directly through livestreams, creates enormous exposure for brands whose products get copied or misrepresented at scale.
Despite sharing DNA with TikTok, Douyin operates as an entirely separate platform under Chinese law, with its own payment infrastructure, content moderation rules, and IP enforcement mechanisms. Brands familiar with TikTok Shop takedown processes need to treat Douyin as a distinct challenge requiring its own strategy and rights registration in the Chinese market.
How Western brands face infringements on Douyin
Western brands face particular exposure on Douyin. Without a verified presence on the platform, they have little visibility into how their trademarks, product imagery, and brand identity get used by third-party sellers. Counterfeiters move quickly into that gap, listing fake goods under recognisable brand names and capturing demand that legitimate products cannot intercept.
Livestream commerce creates a specific challenge. Fraudulent sellers promote counterfeit goods in real-time broadcasts that disappear once the session ends, leaving limited evidence and giving brands a narrow window to act. Fake storefronts compound the problem, often running multiple simultaneous streams across different accounts to maximise reach before any takedown takes effect.
Douyin IP protection programs
ByteDance runs a dedicated intellectual property protection portal for rights holders operating in the Chinese market. Brands with registered trademarks or copyrights in China submit complaints directly through this system to flag infringing content, accounts, and product listings. Registering your IP credentials with the portal before an infringement occurs significantly accelerates enforcement response times when you need to act. Access the portal directly at ipr.bytedance.com.
For products and storefronts
Tackling ecommerce scams shuts counterfeiters down and secures your online revenue, making it a top priority for your brand. To fight these infringements, navigate to the listing or storefront and hit Report, then choose the intellectual property or counterfeit category. It helps to attach evidence of your registered trademark, original product imagery, and any side-by-side comparisons that show the copying clearly. If you have a portal account as a verified rights holder, your complaint will move through review faster.
For livestreams
On Douyin, you can report a live broadcast while it's still running or after it ends. Tap Report, select the relevant violation category, and capture a screen recording if you can. Livestreams disappear once a session ends, so timestamped evidence makes a real difference to your complaint.
