Taobao joins police in battle against online fakes

China's leading online shopping portal recently issued two reports that show the steps it has taken and progress it has made this year in fighting online counterfeits and piracy.

The reports describe how Taobao, Alibaba's online sales website, has been cooperating with police and intellectual property watchdogs nationwide in its battle.

One report showed that as of mid-December Taobao had helped police crack down on more than 1,000 cases of online violations, seized nearly 400 suspects and closed over 200 hideouts and factories.

Alibaba, which runs China's largest online shopping portal Taobao, and Zhejiang provincial IP office released the country's first e-commerce patent protection guideline. Long Wei / For China Daily

Fake goods, including sports shoes, scarves, clothes and bags, were mainly from 10 regions. The top three were the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and Southeast China regions, Beijing Daily reported.

Among the patent infringement complaints that Taobao received this year, 74 percent were about design patents and 23 percent about patents for utility models.

For industries, digital products and small home appliances ranked first in the complaints, followed by daily necessities and sports goods.

Taobao also cooperated with provincial IP offices across the country to find the best ways to combat flaws in the process of protecting patents in the e-commerce field.

On Dec 15, Alibaba Corp and Zhejiang provincial IP office released the country's first e-commerce patent protection guideline.

The two will also try to establish a new mechanism to deal with online patent infringements, to share major information and hold regular meetings.

The Zhejiang IP office spokesman said such cooperation would "help explore new methods of joint IP protection by government agencies, social intermediary organizations and companies".

He also hoped the cooperation could solve problems arising in routine patent protection by e-commerce businesses to promote a healthy and methodical development of the industry.

"Taobao has been devoted to IP protection for years, but many of our endeavors are unknown to the public and even the industrial insiders. These two reports will help change the situation," said Wang Ziling, public relations manager of Alibaba.

"We have also cooperated with quality supervision and copyright administrative organs, and related reports will be issued later," Wang said.

He told China Daily that Taobao would continue to disclose its progress on IP protection by issuing annual reports in the future.

"We consider the initiative to be self-help. The sale of counterfeit goods on our website will not only damage Taobao's reputation, but also harm the interests of law-abiding sellers," Wang said.

Wang Xiaoxing, analyst at Analysys International, told Chongqing Economic Times that, as a listed company in the United States, Alibaba has an urgent need to rid itself of the "fake label" to safeguard its brand value.

Also, he said national supervision of e-commerce business will become stricter and Alibaba needs to develop with the times.

The technology Taobao used in the crackdown is big data, said Ni Liang, senior director of Internet security at Alibaba.

"Every operation on the e-commerce platform can be traced," he said. "Even the same fake product sold in different shops or with different IDs, we could find the real producers and their locations at offline markets via big data technologies, and then give the information to the local police."

Wang also added that controlling and destroying the production of counterfeited goods at source is the only way to reduce their distribution.

Since Taobao sometimes cannot distinguish authentic products from others, it has set up cooperative relationships with many brand companies.

By the end of September, nearly 1,200 brand owners had cooperated with Alibaba for IP protection.

Moreover, Wang said Taobao could help brand owners by providing digital sales records as court evidence when necessary.

Also, Alibaba's security department will buy goods on Taobao to conduct random inspections.

"We want to share our long-term collaborative mechanisms with government enforcement agencies," Wang said.

"And share our related experiences of fighting against online fakes with other Chinese e-commerce platforms to build a fairer business environment."

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/24/2014 page17)