Alibaba is a multinational e-commerce company which was started in 1999 by 18 founders and now has over 100,000 employees. The company, including two of its subsidiaries; Taobao and Tmall, has 180,000+ brands selling products across the group’s online marketplaces. According to Forbes, Alibaba encompasses 77% of the world’s most valuable retail brands. Taobao is an online marketplace aimed at facilitating ‘consumer to consumer’ retail. It is the world’s largest e-commerce site and the seventh most visited website, globally. The Alibaba subsidiary has around 700 million monthly active users and over a billion product listings. Tmall, founded in 2008, is aimed at connecting businesses with consumers and is akin to an online shopping mall includes brands such as Adidas, P&G, Samsung and Lipton, to name a few. In China, 99% of consumers shop and research on marketplaces, with 60% of people aged 30+ years, spending an around 30 minutes per day doing so.

China receives around 7.4 million trademark applications per year and its e-commerce has revolutionized global trade, although the most common IP issue faced by British companies is Bad-faith trademarks or ‘trademark squatting’. Bad-faith trademarks typically involve a trademark being applied for with the intent of selling the usage rights back to the original creator. IPR types in China include; trademarks, patents, design rights, copyright and trade secrets. The China Trademark Office (CTMO), issues trademarks. These are issued with less importance placed on the usage of the mark but more on a “first to file” basis. Patents and Design Rights are administered by the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and can take up to 2 years to process.

China is a signatory to the Berne Convention, so copyright will arise automatically for any work created, within or outside of China, however, unregistered designs receive significantly less protection in China than in the UK. Designers are encouraged to apply for trademark registration at the earliest point within their exploration into the Chinese market. In 2002 Alibaba formally committed to IPR protection by allowing rights-holders to submit reports of infringement by email, this developed into two IPR online protection platforms; AliProtect and TaoProtect. These were integrated, in 2016, into one infringement reporting and takedown system; IPP Platform (ipp.alibabagroup.com).

Notice & Takedown (NTD)

Rights-holders can request that a potential IPR infringing marketplace listing be removed by Alibaba. The first step is to register an account on Alibaba’s IPP Portal. Rights-holders will need proof of identity in addition to company documents and proof of IPR. 96% of NTD requests are processed within 24 hours.

For registered rights-holders, proof can be submitted in the form of a copy of official trademark, copyright or patent certificate. Where designers are reliant upon unregistered rights, the rights-holder must produce a completed Copyright Claim Statement. Marketplaces; Taobao and Tmall, also have a ‘three strikes and out’ and ‘one strike and out’ policy, respectively.

Proactive Monitoring & Offline Enforcement

Alibaba analyse information from complaints and user behavior to monitor for potential IP infringing listings. This supports the proactive removal of counterfeit goods and as a result in 2018, platforms had 67% fewer suspected listings. Half of the world’s manufacturing is carried out in China, so the prevalence of counterfeit goods is understandably high. Alibaba’s offline anti-counterfeiting team works with law enforcement agencies like the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), to provide information for further investigation and action.

IACC MarketSafe®

The IACC MarketSafe Program is the result of a collaboration between the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) and Alibaba. The program enables SME’s to enroll free of charge to submit NTD requests for infringing goods on Alibaba platforms via an expedited removal procedure. Since the program started in 2014 nearly 200,000 counterfeit listings have been removed.

IP contributes around £135 billion in ‘knowledge assets’ to the UK’s economy. The European knowledge economy is worth a staggering €5.7 trillion with counterfeit goods estimated to cause around 9 billion in lost sales.

Read the full report here.