Alibaba'S Repeated Accusations Against The American Clothing And Footwear Association

Group on the United States

and

The AAFA's repeated accusations have been fought back and forth.

While describing the efforts and achievements of protecting intellectual property rights and cracking down on piracy, Alibaba also expressed strong regret and objection to AAFA's disregard of detailed letter and unwarranted accusations.

A Alibaba spokesman said, "unfortunately, AAFA did not read the public documents we submitted in October 7th. Once again, it made an unwarranted accusation, but it was as vague as ever, so that no one could understand what his final appeal was."

Alibaba said that AAFA's "false sky" accusation could not see any intention of helping its members fight against fraud, except that the association was "concerned" once a year.

This unwarranted accusation also shows the ignorance and arrogance of AAFA in modern e-commerce.

The following is the full text of the response:

1, AAFA: Alibaba points out that the number of businesses and goods on its platform is huge, which serves as an excuse for its ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights.

Alibaba: we have never considered our scale and growth rate as an excuse for obstructing the implementation of effective measures.

In a document submitted in October 7th, we pointed out: "any platform that has over 1 billion orders of magnitude and tens of millions of businesses and operates in 24 hours will have a certain number of fakes.

The existence of these fake commodities does not mean that the platform itself has integrity or ineffective implementation.

This is not an excuse.

It simply stated the fact that it would be irresponsible for us to eliminate counterfeit goods on a trading platform like Alibaba.

Because we have been doing it, so we know what a responsible attitude is, and we will never make a mess of it.

In a document submitted on the 7 day, we attached 30 pages of content after the statement, explaining how we took massive measures to combat counterfeiting and anti piracy, and the large resources used to implement these measures.

2, AAFA: the documents submitted by Alibaba in October 7th suggest that a certain number of fakes can be accepted or tolerated, especially for a company as large as Alibaba.

Alibaba: This is deliberately distorted.

Alibaba has never had such a proposal.

Alibaba only admit that the problem of counterfeit goods will never be eradicated, but that does not mean that we believe that fake goods can be tolerated and accepted.

Any e-commerce company in the world with a certain scale will not dare to say that there is no fake problem, whether it is self-employed or platform.

The problem is that Alibaba is making great efforts, even far exceeding the requirements of the law to avoid counterfeit goods appearing on our trading platform.

3, AAFA: Alibaba's editing of trade secret information in the statement documents has aroused a lot of doubt and weakened the integrity of Alibaba claiming to progress in the fight against counterfeiting.

Alibaba: AAFA's position is absurd.

USTR (US Trade Representative Office) has a set of specific procedures for the submission of confidential information.

Alibaba, in accordance with the regulations, adopts measures to protect its own business secrets, and will never give up the right to protect its trade secrets because of AAFA's gratuitous accusation.

Alibaba has not seen that any e-commerce platform in the world will disclose information about counterfeiting and pparency like we do.

The documents submitted by the Alibaba have fully demonstrated the problems and actions taken.

Here are just a few examples:

1) in the year ending August 2016, Alibaba voluntarily closed about 180 thousand Taobao shops.

2) as of September 2016, the number of merchants involved in Taobao anti counterfeiting system (more than 900) was 2.5 times more than that of the previous year.

3) between September 2015 and August 2016 (this is the latest time for the relevant data of law enforcement), with the help of Alibaba, about 675 fake production points, storage points and sales points were closed.

4, from January 2016 to August, we took 25 initiatives to take off every passive operation.

AAFA's position is hypocritical.

On the one hand, it accuses Alibaba of editing specific statistical information, and on the other hand refuses to provide specific evidence of its members' claims.

AAFA did not even mention the names of these brands, nor did they provide relevant information on the application of the brand, the number of members who tried to participate in the Alibaba anti fake project, and how their members applied for the fake experience.

This makes it impossible for us to respond to AAFA's accusations or to solve specific problems raised by its members.

4, AAFA: the number of fake goods on the Alibaba platform is very high.

Alibaba: AAFA reiterated the Chinese government's erroneous claim that the discovery of 67% on Alibaba platform is fake.

This conclusion is wrong, and the Alibaba made a detailed explanation in its October 21st rebuttal statement.

AAFA also claims that it does not know how to understand that Alibaba set up 380 million products last year, while the total volume of goods quoted by the outside world is 1 billion 500 million, and it is suspected that 25% of the products of Alibaba platform are fakes.

We think this is ridiculous, and also illustrate AAFA's ignorance of e-commerce companies.

Our explanation is very clear: in the past year, 380 million products have been voluntarily removed from the Taobao platform, and all Alibaba platforms have "more than 1 billion 500 million" goods at any time.

The list of specific commodities changes every day, which means that the number of platform products is 1 billion 500 million times a year.

The information provided by Alibaba does not mean that 25% of the goods on Alibaba platform are fake.

5, AAFA: unlike the 2015 notorious market report, Taobao did not simplify the procedures for the registration of the obligee and ask for the fakes to go off the shelves.

Alibaba: that's not right.

The Alibaba statement in October 7th and 21st summed up a lot of efforts made by Alibaba in this respect, so that the rights holders could simply protect their rights through the mechanism.

One strong proof is that the number of goods under the Alibaba platform has been more than doubled since it was notified, and that more rights holders are using Alibaba's lower shelf procedures to successfully submit more requests for lower shelves.

At the same time, the Alibaba has launched a mechanism of integrity complaint, which allows the right holders who have good and legitimate record applications to protect their intellectual property rights more simply.

The participants of the integrity complaint mechanism enjoy the premise of bona fide presumption, thus simplifying the obligation of the notice of the goods going off the shelf.

In addition, Alibaba will merge the registration and login process of Taobao intellectual property protection platform TaoProtect and Alibaba intellectual property protection system AliProtect this month, and create a one-stop notification deletion mechanism on Alibaba.com, AliExpress, Taobao, Tmall and 1688.com.

{page_break}

6, AAFA: in the past ten years, the Alibaba has made little improvement in its existing mechanism.

Alibaba: Contrary to the accusation, over the past ten years, the Alibaba has made great efforts in the knowledge and production protection mechanism, and has changed greatly.

We have elaborated on this in the public document submitted in October 7th.

Including the "honest complaint mechanism" formally launched, the most advanced technology developed to detect and crack down on recidivism using different account stores, research and development of new technology means to crack down on abuse of luxury keywords, and release new rules to combat trademark blocking behavior. Meanwhile, the number of members of the "integrity complaint project" has also increased tremendously, and the proportion of active prevention and control has been increasing. More resources have been invested in research and development of new technologies to strengthen the initiative defense capability, and continue to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in coordinating the investigation of offline cases, and sign cooperation agreements with global government agencies.

In addition, we also want to emphasize that in the coming year, we will continue to introduce new rules, including but not limited to: IACCMarketSafe program continues to push ahead with the implementation of a unified "three strikes" policy.

7, AAFA: "three strikes" is not a new policy.

Alibaba: in the public document we provided in October 7th, it is once again clearly stated that Taobao has introduced different strategies of "three strikes" and "four strikes" since 2015.

This year, we are improving this strategy to make it more effective.

In regard to the differences between Taobao's "three strikes" and "four outs" strategy, the October 7th documents have been explained in detail.

In short, the "three strikes" strategy stipulates that three complaints of the same right against the same seller will be permanently closed.

In addition, Taobao has introduced a "four out" strategy to permanently shut down the seller's account of the potential infringing goods, and is not limited to the integrity of trademarks and commodities.

As we explained in the October 7th document, in January 2017, Taobao will introduce a unique strategy, namely, the "three strikes" strategy. Taobao will use this strategy to permanently close the seller's account of suspected potential sale of infringing goods, whether or not the trademark is identical with the commodity.

This is a brand new strategy, and it will also speed up the process of closing repeated infringing accounts.

8, AAFA: Contrary to the notorious market report in 2015, Taobao generally did not shorten the time required for counterfeit goods to go off the shelves or punish the time spent by fake sellers.

Alibaba: it is clear that in the past year, the average shelf time has been shortened.

But AAFA once again argued that without any evidence or specific information, some members reported that there was a delay in the punishment of businesses and businesses.

If we do not know what the problem is, Alibaba will not be able to respond to this specific allegation.

9, AAFA: Contrary to the 2015 notorious market report, Alibaba did not make it easier for the obligee to use Taobao's integrity complaint mechanism, and continue to apply this mechanism in a different way.

Alibaba: in the documents submitted in October 7th and October 21st, we introduced in detail the measures adopted by Alibaba in protecting the intellectual property rights mechanism, including the integrity complaint mechanism, which can be used more conveniently.

By the end of September 2016, we had more than 900 brands joining the integrity complaint mechanism, an increase of 2.5 times compared with the same period last year.

Nearly three of them are international brands (many of which are based in the US).

We have been committed to ensuring that more companies, including SMEs, can submit their integrity complaints through IACC's MarketSafe project.

In addition, as we said in the response document submitted in October 21st, we actively recruit the right holders who wish to join the integrity complaint mechanism, and actively contact those who have not yet reached the requirements of the integrity complaint mechanism to train them how to meet the standards.

AAFA vaguely claims that "some AAFA members...

No complaints have been entered into the integrity mechanism, and others have not been able to get involved.

AAFA has never said clearly who these members are or what problems have caused them to encounter obstacles in participating in the integrity complaint mechanism, which makes Alibaba almost unable to respond to his accusations.