A Store in Your Pocket, the Law in the Background: TikTok Shop Under the Regulators’ Lens
Publication date: July 24, 2026
You see a video, a product catches your eye, and an “add to cart” button is already blinking in the corner of the screen. A few seconds later the order is placed, paid for, and on its way — all without leaving the app. That’s how TikTok Shop works: a closed-loop model in which the path from watching a piece of content to completing a purchase has been cut to the bare minimum. That very immediacy is its greatest strength and, at the same time, the source of its most serious concerns.
The article was prepared by KG LEGAL KIEŁTYKA GŁADKOWSKI based in Cracow, Poland, specialising in cross border cases, with its focus on new technologies, IT and life science, discusses start-ups, differences between business secret and know-how and the value of these for a company being a start-up, protection of intellectual property, the importance of patent law for start-ups, protection of biotechnological inventions, copyright, the patentability of inventions, protection of IT solutions, procedures for obtaining a patent and rights granted under a patent.