How To Remove Counterfeits From Alibaba: Register Your China IP

We have for years been writing about how our China lawyers have a near 100% success rate at getting counterfeit products removed from Alibaba  websites like Taobao and Tmall.

Alibaba has fairly clear written procedures for securing the removal of links to counterfeit products that infringe another company’s IP rights. To secure the removal of such material, one must follow these procedures to the letter. Among other things the process requires documentation proving the IP owner’s existence and the IP owners rights to the IP in question. If everything goes smoothly, it takes Alibaba a week or two to remove counterfeit products from its site. We have not once failed to secure the removal from Alibaba of product that violates our client’s trademark rights when we have sought that removal from Alibaba.

A few weeks ago, I sat on a panel in New York City at the Cardozo China Fashion Law IP Symposium, discussing mostly Alibaba and how to remove counterfeit products from Alibaba websites. For the video of that event, click here and go about 49 minutes in. To grossly summarize the seminar, China lawyers who routinely deal with Alibaba know how to fairly easily and fairly cheaply get counterfeit products removed from Alibaba websites, but the general public mostly do not. Why is this? The below recent email (which is actually a consolidation of multiple emails) from one of our China attorneys to a US gaming company seeking our help in removing counterfeit products from multiple China websites goes a long way towards explaining this easy/difficult split:

Our China lawyers regularly work on takedown matters across multiple websites, including many Alibaba websites. Every Chinese website has its own protocols, and the key to getting products removed is to follow that site’s protocols. You express an interest in suing these websites and we do not advise that unless and until we have sought to get your products taken down and failed. Lawsuits are expensive and based on our track record in securing takedowns, the odds are overwhelming that we will never need to file one on your behalf. To put things in perspective, we have never filed one. There is actually a big lawsuit pending right now against Alibaba, here in the U.S. no less, but that lawsuit deals a lot more with why so many counterfeit products show up on Alibaba websites in the first place than it does on Alibaba’s failure to take down counterfeit products once on one of their sites.

You are correct that only the copyright or trademark owner or its authorized representative can make takedown requests. However, sites vary as to the sort of authentication they need for a Power of Attorney and most of the sites with which we deal know us well enough such that they rarely, if ever, require that we provide them with formal Power of Attorneys to achieve a takedown.

The most important thing is that if you want to get traction, we will need to show proof that you have registered your IP (copyright or trademark) somewhere. Some sites sometimes will takedown products with foreign IP registrations, but China registrations are always much better. Technically, China is obligated to recognize copyrights registered in any Berne Convention signatory nation, but explaining China’s WTO obligations to a 21-year-old customer service representative seldom works. And as you can probably imagine, securing the removal of copyrighted IP for which a copyright has never been registered anywhere is even more difficult. This is why gaming/video/music companies so often complain about how difficult it is to secure counterfeit takedowns from Chinese websites. By the time they get their China copyright registration and can submit a takedown request, the damage has been done. How many people will still be downloading today’s big game six months from now?

Another thing to consider is that the more sophisticated/well-heeled the website, the more likely it is that they have a formal takedown procedure, or perhaps even a full-fledged website for submitting complaints. This is what Alibaba does. For the smaller websites, we generally have to contact someone directly because there are no instructions on the website or they are hopeless. But unless the website is a pirate site (which is rarely the case), it does not want to be sued for hosting counterfeit or pirated content and so long as we do all the work for them, they’ll be happy to take down rogue products and content.

Finally, you should be aware that once this whole takedown process begins, it’s pretty much ongoing. The pirates and counterfeiters don’t just give up because their first upload got taken down. And even if we stop one or two of those who are counterfeiting your game, we should expect more to pop up. We constantly need to monitor and report. One of the things we can and should do though is try to figure out who is doing the counterfeiting, how they are doing it, and what we can do — if anything — to try to stop it or slow it down.

My law firm has an Alibaba account that makes us eligible to seek removal of links that infringe our clients’ IP. We do this by submitting proof of identification and authorization, as well as information regarding the IP which is being infringed upon. This is accomplished by our providing the following to Alibaba: (i) our client’s “business license,” (ii) any formal IP registration documents and (iii) (sometimes) a power of attorney signed by the client, authorizing us to file the complaint on its behalf. We also submit the following information: the IP registration number(s), the title of the IP, the name of the IP owner, the type of IP, the country of registration, the time period during which the IP registration is effective, and the period during which the IP owner wishes to protect its IP rights. We translate these documents into Chinese to make things easier on the Chinese website company and because doing so greatly speeds things up.

After submission, it typically takes Alibaba 2-5 working days to verify our information.

Once Alibaba verifies the information we provide, we provide the infringing links and removal virtually always quickly occurs. For complaints concerning patent rights, we also need to provide proof of the connection between the infringing material and the IP being infringed. Alibaba normally takes 5-7 working days to process a complaint, which typically consists of passing along the complaint to the infringing party.

If the infringing party does not respond to the complaint within three working days of receipt, either by deleting the infringing link or by filing a cross-complaint, Alibaba will delete the infringing link. Absent prior written permission from Alibaba, the infringing party would then be prohibited from posting the same information on Alibaba again. If the infringing party files a cross-complaint, we would then need to deny the cross-complaint, and then Alibaba would handle the “dispute.” Alibaba normally takes about 2-5 working days to resolve such disputes. As you would imagine, counterfeiters almost never file a cross-complaint; they just slink away.

We have achieved similar results with China’s other leading and legitimate online marketplaces. But as you would expect, China’s smaller and sketchier marketplaces are more problematic when it comes to IP protection.

Bottom Line: If your IP (your trademark or your copyright or your patent) is registered in China, securing the removal from Chinese websites of products that infringe on your IP is relatively easy. If your IP is registered in a country other than China, securing the removal from Chinese websites of products that infringe on your IP can be accomplished, but not always. If your IP (your unregistered U.S. trademark, for instance, or your unregistered copyright) is not registered anywhere, your best tact for securing removal of infringing products is usually to first register it and then seek removal, rather than to seek removal first.

The post How To Remove Counterfeits From Alibaba: Register Your China IP appeared first on China Law Blog.

We will be discussing the practical aspects of Chinese law and how it impacts business there. We will be telling you what works and what does not and what you as a businessperson can do to use the law to your advantage. Our aim is to assist businesses already in China or planning to go into China, not to break new ground in legal theory or policy.