Recently Alibaba efficiently fights against counterfeits on its e-commerce-platforms like Tmall or Taobao. The internet giant is also willing to closely cooperate with brand owners. As a result, more and more new businesses start to emerge with the aim to gain profit. Unfortunately, their actions are often based on unfair means.
The main business of these so called “reputation-protection firms” is to assist brand owners in monitoring Alibaba’s websites. Within these new IP firms, black sheeps are unfortunately very common. In order to increase their revenue, they denounce online merchants without any reason or based on fake reports. Due to this procedure numerous online merchants feel threatened and intimidated. Since the foundation of Alibaba’s Intellectual Property Protection Platform, nearly a quarter of the total complaints are reported to be of malicious nature.
Now Alibaba wants to fight against such malicious actions. For this purpose, Alibaba publically pledged to no longer pay attention to or trust those protection firms. In order to strengthen its commitment, Alibaba also published a blacklist, containing various names of unreliable IP firms, in its official blog “alizila.com”.
It remains to be seen if those efforts can make a contribution to resolving this problem. Brand owners wanting to fight against counterfeits should always seek the support of well-established and renowned service providers.
China Intellectual Property Blog 