Difficulties Faced by E-commerce Sites

The last week, The US trade officials announced that they had placed Taobao back to their list of the world’s most notorious markets for selling counterfeit products (Taobao is an online shopping website situated in China and managed by the Alibaba Group). Taobao was put on the trade representative office’s blacklist in 2011 but removed in 2012 after addressing concerns of intellectual property rights holders and committing to cut the amount of pirated and counterfeit goods for sale online.

The move by the U.S. Trade Representative's office, followed complaints from U.S. and international trade groups for apparel and luxury goods that Taobao was not doing enough to control sales of fakes and pirated products.

Michael Evans, Alibaba group president, said that the company was “very disappointed” to be put back on the list, and that Alibaba was far more advanced in protecting intellectual property rights than it was four years ago. The group president added that the decision ignored Alibaba’s work to remove more than twice the number of product listings this year than in 2015.

The trade representative’s office acknowledged that Alibaba had taken steps to combat piracy, including addressing the misuse of brand keywords, blurring trademarks in product images and developing technology to prevent counterfeit sellers from reopening under new names.

Being blacklisted does not carry any penalties, but it is a blow to Alibaba, which has been working to shed perceptions that its websites are riddled with fakes.


Source:
http://in.reuters.com/article/usa-trade-alibaba-idINKBN14A2EV