On 4th of January, Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba sued two vendors for selling fake Swavrovski watches, and since then, they ramped up their attempts to combat counterfeit goods. Their brand new partnership with 20 new companies is first step in the process.
Mars, Samsung and Louis Vuitton are some major names which have joined hands with Alibaba for eliminating fake products. The alliance of these 20 companies is being refereed to as “The Alibaba Big Data Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance”. The Austrian watch maker Swarovski , which helped Alibaba in its court cases against the fake sellers is also a part of the list.
It is being hoped that the cumulative industrial and technical proficiency of all these companies, and their combined reach, will help keep the e-commerce platform free from counterfeit products. Alibaba said that their present system scans over 10 million listings on its e-commerce sites each day and it helped them in eliminating 380 million fake ones, cease entries from around 180,000 sellers and put “hundreds of counterfeiters” behind bars.
The company made a statement that:
Alibaba will provide alliance members with big data and advanced technological support in their IP enforcement work, including helping to block, screen and take down infringing listings. Brands, have committed to share their expertise on IP authentication and anti-counterfeiting data with Alibaba.
The Chinese behemoth also stated that the alliance will “pool resources and increase collaboration” for removing fake products and such sellers from the platform.
Jessie Zheng, chief platform governance officer at Alibaba, said in a statement;
The most powerful weapon against counterfeiting today is data and analytics, and the only way we can win this war is to unite.
The alliance appeared to be prompted by the firm’s recent return to the 2016’s annual list of most notorious platforms selling counterfeit products after an impressive four year absence.
Meanwhile, the manufacturers themselves will also benefit through this partnership as fake products, which are usually of lower quality, not only keep them from a substantial portion of their revenue, but also have a negative impact on these companies reputation.
