Alibaba, China's largest retailer, has often been blamed for allowing the sale of counterfeit products in their platform. But the e-commerce player has come a long way in recent years.
Alibaba has taken counter measures to fight sellers of counterfeit goods on its platform. The Chinese company has partnered with 20 global consumer brands, including Louis Vuitton, Samsung, Swarovski and Mars, to keep its e-commerce platform free from pirated goods.
The partnership, aptly named "Alibaba Big Data Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance," aims to use the latest technological resources such as algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help identify fake sellers.
"The most powerful weapon against counterfeiting today is data and analytics, and the only way we can win this war is to unite," Alibaba's chief platform officer, Jessie Zheng, said in the statement. "With our robust data capabilities, we are confident the alliance will accelerate the digital transformation in our global fight against counterfeits."
The anti-counterfieting technologies used by Alibaba scans up to 10 million product listings in a day, which has helped the company remove over 380 million product lists, shot down 180,000 third-party seller stores and hundreds of counterfeiters behind bars. As members of the alliance, global consumer brands will get access to Alibaba's expertise on "IP authentication and anti-counterfeiting data," which can help them take legal actions against the offenders.
The news comes shortly after the U.S. government placed Alibaba in the list of notorious counterfeit platforms. Alibaba Group President Michael Evans expressed strong disagreement towards USTR's (US Trade Representative) decision and questioned it whether it was based on the "actual facts or was influenced by the current political climate".
According to Evans, Alibaba had removed more than 2x the number of infringing product listings in 2016 than it had done in the previous year. Recently, the company also sued two sellers of fake Swarovski watches on Taobao, an online trade platform backed by Alibaba.
"We are very proud of our highly robust anti-counterfeiting programs and believe we have dedicated far more personnel, financial resources and advanced technologies toward protecting intellectual property than any other e-commerce company," Evans wrote.
