Alibaba Is Cracking Down On Counterfeit Goods. How Is It Going?

Last week, Glossy reported some good news from global luxury brands and distributors, according to the latest data from Entrupy, a luxury certification platform. Last week, the number of counterfeit goods sold by dealers declined in 2018. As luxury retailers grow online, the future trend looks more positive for platforms such as Alibaba that face fake sellers.

Just three years ago, Alibaba was blacklisted by the international anti counterfeiting Alliance (IACC) out of the bad market, marking a major turning point for the company in winning the trust of the luxury goods industry and its consumers. The Alibaba set up its own anti counterfeiting alliance in the following year, expanding from 30 members to 121 brands, including Louis Vuitton/Tapestry (Coach), Michael Kors and Prada, and other valuable luxury brands such as Disney, apple and Starbucks.

It seems that the alliance is making progress. Now, on Alibaba's e-commerce platform, the ratio of consumer counterfeit product complaints to product withdrawal has dropped by 70% compared with the same period last year.

The Alibaba's recent intellectual property report covers their efforts in 2018, emphasizing the "record results", including the closure of more than 1500 offline facilities for the manufacture of counterfeit goods, with an estimated total value of US $1 billion 200 million. According to the company, about 96% of the counterfeit products were removed before sale, while the request for deletion by intellectual property holders decreased by 32% compared with the previous year.

It is worth noticing that the news came out when President Trump signed a memorandum at the end of April, promising to contain Alibaba, the US electricity supplier giant Amazon and some other websites selling online counterfeit goods shortly after. The Alibaba responded in a statement, "we welcome this new initiative and its concern for global counterfeiting." The company has "developed a first-class system to protect [Intellectual Property Rights] and combat counterfeiting" and expects to further promote working relations and cooperation with the federal agencies and global business partners mentioned.

In the same month, Taobao has been on the list of notorious market names for the US Trade Representative (USTR) for third consecutive years. The US trade representative said: "a large number of infringing products are sold and sold on Taobao, and stakeholders are still reporting that they are faced with challenges and burdens on maintaining their intellectual property rights on the platform."

Alibaba did solve its integrity plan in its latest report, and claimed that in 2018, the "integrity" plan made it easier for those who request to delete fake goods to submit these requests, transfer to the membership of automatic qualified brands, and further relax the requirements for accession. As of October 2018, these two improvements helped to increase the membership of the scheme by 44% over the same period last year.

April is an important month to solve the problem of intellectual property protection. Although Ali has been listed as a notorious market, the e-commerce group has been recognized at the luxury Law Summit. Its participants include executives from Gucci, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, who sell online through the high-end channels of Alibaba Tmall platform. Matthew Bassiur, vice president of Alibaba global intellectual property enforcement, was named luxury intellectual property and technology innovator by Fred Mostert, President of the luxury law union. He said Alibaba has "significantly improved its position in the international community". And "Alibaba has been criticized for its intellectual property protection efforts in the past three years as a leader and innovator in the field."

At the summit, Rick Helfenbein, President and chief executive officer of American Apparel&Footwear, also welcomed Alibaba's efforts and said that the company had "seized the banner of intellectual property protection and was competing with it."

Thanks to the growth of confidence and participation in international brands and Chinese law enforcement agencies, Alibaba's big data and AI capabilities have proved to be a gospel for its crackdown. The group's intellectual property protection alliance is now in 16 countries and regions. According to Bassiur, the group uses learning algorithms to detect counterfeit goods, so the more brand owners contribute to their trademark implementation, the better the algorithm can understand violations of their rights.

In its 2017 report on wealth, Alibaba revealed that it had the capability to scan more than 10 million product lists per day, and ended about 675 counterfeiting operations in about four months from August 2016 to January 2017. Meanwhile, according to China Daily, in 2018, more than 1900 counterfeit suspects were arrested because of the group's efforts.

"Usually in other countries, when we use the platform, we will deal with fake goods in real time, and the cooperation with Alibaba is a very active way to deal with counterfeit goods," said consul general Jesper Herold Halle of the Danish Consulate General at the luxury Law Summit.

For luxury goods and fast moving consumer goods industry, the fight against counterfeiting is far from over. In January 2018, Alibaba suggested that many counterfeiters on its platform should be transferred to less stringent platforms, such as a lot of spells and lots of spells, which were recently attacked by suppliers of fake and shoddy goods. Others have turned to less official sales channels, such as selling counterfeit products with WeChat, making things more complicated. Many suppliers are increasingly bragging about products that look almost the same as real products, and claim that the products are made by factories that manufacture authentic products. Author: Jessica Rapp