The US Trade Representative (USTR) put Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (阿里巴巴) Taobao (淘寶) on its blacklist for the second year in a row over suspected counterfeits sold on the shopping platform, a move the Chinese e-commerce giant said did not reflect its IP-protection efforts.
Alibaba’s hugely popular Taobao is one of 25 online markets, along with 18 physical markets, on the USTR’s annual list of the world’s most “notorious markets” for sales of pirated and counterfeit goods.
Taobao, the largest e-commerce marketplace in China and its third-most popular Web site, was able to stay off the list from 2012 to 2015, but was included in 2016 and now again last year.
While Taobao’s inclusion does not carry any direct penalties, it is a blow to Alibaba’s efforts to shed perceptions that its sites are riddled with fakes and that its anti-piracy policies are inadequate.
“A high volume of infringing products reportedly continue to be offered for sale and sold on Taobao.com and stakeholders continue to report challenges and burdens associated with IP enforcement on the platform,” the USTR said.
The agency acknowledged Alibaba’s efforts to curb the sale of infringing products on Taobao, but said the prevalence of infringing listings and sales remained a challenge.
Alibaba defended itself, saying it had made using its IP protection programs easier, which led to an 11 percent increase in registries.
It also said there had been a 25 percent drop in takedown requests, as it removed infringing listings even before they reached its marketplaces.
“In light of all this, it’s clear that no matter how much action we take and progress we make, the USTR is not actually interested in seeing tangible results,” Alibaba Group president Michael Evans said in a statement.
Alibaba’s data did not directly reflect the scope and status of the counterfeiting problem on Taobao, but was merely suggestive of progress in its anti-counterfeit efforts, the USTR said, adding that those efforts appeared to be more toward addressing the concerns of global brands rather than small and medium businesses.
“It is incumbent upon Alibaba to develop more effective means to address the concerns of the full range of US businesses that continue to find infringing versions of their products for sale on Taobao.com,” the USTR said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)