Alibaba spent $163m fighting fake goods

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd founder Jack Ma arrives at the New York Stock Exchange for his company's initial public offering (IPO) under the ticker "BABA" in New York Sept 19, 2014. [Photo / Agencies]

Alibaba Group Holding spent over 1 billion yuan ($163 million) fighting counterfeits goods and improving customer protection in the past two year till November, the world's largest e-commerce company said on Tuesday.

Alibaba worked with brand holders and tackled six million web links containing infringement items for the first three quarters this year, assisting in more than 1,000 cases and arrests of nearly 400 suspects, said the company.

It's the first time that the Internet behemoth has disclosed data related to its crackdown on counterfeits.

"From Alibaba Group's perspective, we bear a serious responsibility in this fight against counterfeits," said Alibaba Chief Executive Jonathan Lu in a statement.

A team of 2,000 staff works in the battle against fake goods, which includes hackers, authentication specialists and data modeling analysts, reported Beijing Times on Wednesday.

Alibaba plans to launch a "strike out" standard next year to tackle counterfeits, which means accounts will be frozen permanently if a brand files complaints against the same seller three times, said Shao Xiaofeng, the company's Chief Risk Officer, at a press conference on Tuesday.

Alibaba is expected to clamp down against counterfeits with greater aggression, particularly as it debuted at New York Exchange with a record-setting $25 billion listing in September.

Ma said at the World's Internet Conference in Wuzhen last month that only the Internet can solve the problem of counterfeits.

"After some research among fake goods producers in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, you may find that they are now afraid to sell their products on Taobao, as we can track them down easily and report to the police," he said.

 

Top 9 popular goods Alibaba's buyers purchase overseas

By expanding globally with the participation of AliExpress and Tmall Global, customers from 217 countries and regions outside the Chinese mainland joined the shopping spree, with China's Hong Kong region, the United States and Russia claiming the top three overseas buyer areas.

Chinese shoppers have also been purchasing goods overseas with good value and quality. As females were the main force in the shopping spree, skin-care products and maternal and children's articles were on the list of the most popular goods for Chinese buyers who shopped overseas via online services.

Smart phones

Tmall sold 1,894,867 mobile phones on Double 11 and became the online platform that sold the most handsets in 24 hours.

A customer configures the fingerprint scanner technology built into iPhone 5S at an Apple store in Beijing, Sept 20, 2013. [Photo/IC]