Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), which faced scrutiny for allegedly selling counterfeit goods on its Web sites, said it removed 90 million listings that might have breached intellectual property laws.
The product listings were taken down across Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms until September, chief risk officer Polo Shao (邵曉峰) said yesterday at a press conference in Hangzhou, China.
Alibaba, which raised a record US$25 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) in September, said it spent US$160.7 million from the beginning of last year through last month to block counterfeit products and boost consumer protection.
The strategy is part of Alibaba’s plan to build its reputation, now that the company is larger in market value than General Electric Co and Procter & Gamble Co.
Controlling the sales of fake and pirated goods will be crucial in maintaining credibility with investors and limiting risks of lawsuits, analysts said.
“Selling counterfeits has been one of the key criticisms that Alibaba has faced,” Beijing-based Forrester Research Inc analyst Vanessa Zheng said. “Even though the company’s shares have done well, it does not mean that Alibaba is not aware of the risks down the road.”
China’s largest e-commerce company has gained 60 percent since its market debut, compared with a 0.9 percent decline in the NYSE Composite Index.
The company’s efforts to fight copyright infringement are part of a larger legal issue in China.
China is host to a number of markets known for “prominent and extensive availability of counterfeit merchandise,” the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) said in a February report. It cited Beijing’s Silk Market and Guangdong’s Zengcheng International Jeans Market, where vendors set up stalls, as examples.
“The fact that Alibaba has a system set up to raise complaints about counterfeit products is an improvement compared with the other on-the-ground shops,” Zheng said.
Alibaba’s most popular platforms are Taobao and Tmall.com, which connect consumers to retail brands. The platforms do not sell merchandise themselves and make most of their sales from commissions and advertising.
To safeguard against infringements, vendors are required to make deposits with Alibaba to ensure that their products are genuine, allowing buyers and sellers to rate each other and helping consumers get refunds.
The company had penalized 131,000 sellers as of Sept. 30, and its cooperation with Chinese law enforcement agencies in more than 1,000 counterfeiting cases this year led to the arrests of 400 suspects, the company said.
Alibaba was removed from the US government’s Notorious Markets list in 2012.
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
COLLABORATION: The operations center shows the close partnership between Taiwan and Japan in the field of semiconductors, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo said Tokyo Electron Ltd, Asia’s biggest semiconductor equipment supplier, yesterday launched a NT$2 billion (US$61.5 million) operations center in Tainan as it aims to expand capacity and meet growing demand. Its new Taiwan Operations Center is expected to help customers release their products faster, boost production efficiency and shorten equipment repair time in a cost-effective way, the company said. The center is about a five-minute drive from the factories of its major customers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) advanced 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer fabs. The operations center would have about 1,000 employees when it is fully utilized, the company
Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has retired from the company and stepped down from its board of directors just as the company is in the middle of trying to execute a turnaround plan. Intel chief financial officer David Zinsner and Intel Products CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus are serving as interim co-CEOs while the board searches for Gelsinger’s replacement, the company said in a statement. Frank Yeary, independent chair of the board of Intel, is to serve as interim executive chair, the company said. Gelsinger’s departure is hitting at a tumultuous time for the US chipmaker. Once the industry leader in
RSS