Alibaba signs MoU with copyright protection coalition
Alibaba and The International Publishers Copyright Protection Coalition in China (IPCC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), under which they will cooperate to combat copyright infringement on the AliExpress and Taobao online marketplace. In a statement issued yesterday (24 June), Alibaba said that the MoU broadens the scope of an earlier agreement signed in August 2011.
As part of the agreement, the IPCC, which includes 17 leading international publishers, will “assist Alibaba Group to identify product listings of potentially infringing products offered for sale by third parties on Taobao Marketplace or AliExpress, and Taobao Marketplace and AliExpress”, and Alibaba said that it “will take appropriate actions to remove such infringing products”.
“The MoU is a significant step towards safeguarding the interests of rights owners in the Internet space, and we thank the IPCC – an important industry body in the publishing sector in China – for their active involvement and continued trust in us. As our business ecosystem encompasses an increasingly diverse range of online sellers, it is more important now than ever for us to be able to join forces with partners and stakeholders to effectively identify and take down infringers,” said Ni Liang, Alibaba Group’s Senior Director of Intellectual Property Protection.
“The large scale and rapid growth of the e-commerce environment requires continuous and stronger collaboration with platform operators to effectively battle IPR infringement activities,” said Hugo Zhang, Chairman of the IPCC. “The deepening of our partnership with Alibaba Group is the next logical step to not just protect the legal interests of our community of global publishers, but those of Chinese and international consumers as well.”
Alibaba said that its cooperation with the IPCC dates back to December 2010 when the parties rolled out a special joint-program specific to Taobao Marketplace that resulted in the removal of close to 1,000 pirated publications. Subsequent to the signing of the 2011 MoU, Alibaba has offered training workshops on the use of its intellectual property infringement reporting system to various IPCC members.
