Starting January 2016, Matthew Bassiur, ex-Apple Senior Director, Americas Region, and Counsel for IPR Enforcement, will take up the role of Vice President, Head of Global Intellectual Property Enforcement at Alibaba.
The announcement came today from the company via a blog post. Bassiur will be the head of a team that works with international brands and retail partners, industry associations, government regulators, law enforcement and other organizations to better Alibaba Group’s anti-counterfeiting and IP rights protection efforts.
Currently, Bassiur is working as Vice President, Deputy Chief Security Officer at Pfizer. His responsibilities here include overseeing Pfizer’s anti-counterfeiting operations, large-scale investigations into criminal activity, physical security and crisis management for North, Central and South America. But the gem in Bassiur’s resume would be his time as Senior Director, Global Security & Counsel for IPR Enforcement at Apple.
His responsibilities during this phase included building and overseeing an investigative program into complex thefts, frauds, leaks, threats and cyber-related crimes, as well as developing and implementing Apple’s civil, criminal, and administrative anti-counterfeiting program.
Matthew’s appointment is the latest step in Alibaba Group’s comprehensive and industry-leading efforts to fight counterfeits,
said Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group.
Counterfeiting is a problem that challenges all forms of distribution, whether in e-commerce or offline retail. We will continue to be relentless in our long-term commitment to protect both consumers and intellectual property rights owners, and we call on all companies in our industry to join our fight against bad actors.”
Alibaba, itself is having its fair share of counterfeit item problems and the folks want their hard established institution to be completely cleaned out. The company has been both active and innovative in dealing with counterfeiting, as of late. The service’s algorithm is also specially designed to point out to even the smallest of details.
He will be joining Alibaba in January 2016 and will be directly reporting to Michael Evans, the newly hired President of the Alibaba Group.
Matthew makes a great addition to the Alibaba team,
said Michael Evans.
His expertise in IP rights protection, policy creation and enforcement, as well as his deep familiarity with China, will complement our dedicated IPR enforcement team in China and help us to continue to globalize as a company, working with our brand, industry and government partners worldwide.
