Alibaba helps close over 2,000 illicit manufacturing facilities, says report
Alibaba Group’s intellectual property rights-protection efforts resulted in 1,045 IP-related leads being passed to law enforcement in 2019, and the closure of 2,029 facilities involved in the manufacturing and distribution of illicit goods, according to its annual Intellectual Property Rights report.
The Chinese e-commerce company’s report also noted that 96% of proactively-removed listings (found by Alibaba) were eliminated before a single sale took place, and 96% of removal requests submitted through Alibaba’s online Intellectual Property Protection Platform (IPP Platform) were processed within 24 hours.
The group cited a “combination of ever-improving technologies and close partnerships with brands and other external stakeholders”, which helped deliver “strong results for the company in the core areas of proactive monitoring and removal, rights-holder takedown requests and offline enforcement.”
The company’s IPP Platform, which allows brands to submit online requests to protect their IPR, continued to help rights holders track the complaint process and counter-notices submitted by merchants, with the program’s membership growing 20% in 2019, said an Alibaba statement.
The e-commerce company also cited growing membership of the Alibaba Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance (AACA) – which brings together rights holders and other IP stakeholders to share industry and technical know-how in the fight against IP infringers – as a driver of success.
The body had 170 rights holders from around the world by the end of 2019. This is up from 30 at its launch in January 2017.
In December 2019, Alibaba also launched a channel for Chinese consumers to report physical stores that are suspected of engaging in counterfeiting, piracy or other types of infringement.
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