Shopify Settles Copyright Suit With Rival Shopline, Faces New Antitrust Fight

Shopify and Hong Kong-founded competitor Shopline struck a confidential deal to end a two-year copyright dispute this week. The settlement removes one legal liability for the Ottawa e-commerce giant. Another case, an antitrust lawsuit from buy-now-pay-later provider Sezzle, remains open.

Shopify sued Shopline in 2022, accusing the company of copying its Dawn storefront template wholesale and rebranding it as Seed. The complaint called it a thinly disguised knockoff. On June 30 the two sides signed a confidential settlement, Shopify COO Jessica Hertz confirmed by resharing a Reuters report on X with the acronym FAFO. General counsel Jean Niehaus told BetaKit that Shopline was ordered to stop distributing Seed and to pay an undisclosed sum. Shopline did not respond to a request for comment.

“Shopline copied our Dawn theme, rebranded it, and sold it against us,” Niehaus said. “Open source is built on trust, and we’ll defend that every time someone treats it as a free pass to steal.”

Shopify’s growth has made it a bigger target for litigation beyond this case. The company has faced frequent patent-troll lawsuits since 2023 and adopted an aggressive defense strategy. That approach paid off last year when Shopify overturned a $40 million verdict in favor of Express Mobile.

A separate threat came in 2025 from Sezzle. The Minneapolis-based BNPL provider accused Shopify of unfairly promoting its own pay-later features over competing services. Shopify tried to get the case tossed in May. A judge ruled that some of Sezzle’s antitrust-injury claims were plausible, so the lawsuit proceeds.

The court has not yet issued a final order on the permanent injunction that would bar Shopline from distributing Seed. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.