Posts Tagged: "Alibaba"

As online marketplaces have been created and subsequently evolved over time, there always seems to be a point where counterfeits and diverted gray-market goods make their way onto those marketplaces. eBay was one of the first e-commerce sites that gave brand owners and trademark owners the ability to review, monitor and take down infringing goods. This program was called VERO (Verified Rights Owner Program). Alibaba and Amazon are now making their own similar efforts to rid their platforms of counterfeit and infringing goods in an effort to keep the big brands interested in selling on their sites.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: Chinese state political advisors suggest changes to the country’s copyright law, including stronger punitive measures for infringement; President Donald Trump bans Huawei telecommunications equipment from use on U.S. networks; Korean IP offices get ready to study inter-Korean IP cooperation; Huawei and Samsung reach a conclusion to their worldwide patent litigation; AbbVie okays a generic Humira treatment in 2023; Disney escapes Pirates of the Caribbean copyright suit unscathed; Guns N’ Roses files a trademark suit over a beer; Qualcomm enters into another worldwide patent license for 5G technology; and Procter & Gamble unveils its largest research and development center after $400 million upgrade to Ohio facility.

This week in Other Barks & Bites: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office promotes Scott Boalick to Chief Judge of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB); the agency also announces a new pilot program for motions to amend at the PTAB; India’s Cabinet votes to bring trademark and industrial design law into accord with international standards; a trial date is set in the copyright case brought by the heirs of Marvin Gaye against Ed Sheeran; a Southern California district judge rules that a Dr. Seuss/Star Trek mash-up is a transformative fair use; Apple alleges that someone has tampered with a key witness in the Qualcomm patent infringement case; and UK finance ministers issue a report calling for more antitrust activity against American tech giants, including Facebook and Google.

On Monday, October 22nd, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken of the Southern District of New York entered an opinion and order in a trademark case brought by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba against a group of companies operating in Dubai and Belarus involved in marketing a cryptocurrency known as AlibabaCoin. Judge Oetken’s order granted Alibaba’s motion enjoining the defendants from using Alibaba’s protected marks in the U.S., including in connection with goods and services provided over the Internet to U.S. consumers. Another motion filed by Alibaba to compel documents from the defendants was denied as moot.

Alibaba alleges that defendant Alibabacoin (ABBC) Foundation has engaged in an unlawful scheme to misappropriate the Alibaba name in order to raise over $3.5 million in cryptoassets from investors. The complaint alleges that scheme was a part of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that is neither registered nor approved by U.S.

Branded apparel companies face many challenges in protecting their IP assets, including the unavailability of copyright protection for fashion designs, the length of time necessary to secure a design patent, the challenge of securing secondary meaning required for a trade dress claim before the market is flooded with knock-offs, and the geographic and practical impediments to pursuing counterfeiters, who are often foreign-based and/or judgment proof.  Perhaps mindful of the limited statutory protections for IP assets and the significant damages being incurred at the hands of infringers, various courts, particularly in the Second and Ninth Circuits, have in recent years taken steps to enhance the alternatives available to apparel companies confronted by the scourge of knockoffs.  Specifically, such court decisions have (1) expanded the scope of potential contributorily liable actors, and (2) broadened the means of freezing and attaching assets of foreign counterfeiters.

Mr. Matal opened his discussion stating his belief that independent inventors are the lifeblood of American innovation. He said that a patent is a property right and that whether an inventor actually manufactures the invention or seeks to license it, the rights provided by the patent should be the same. Having said this, he still believes that the PTAB should be able to invalidate a patent, but he did say that it is definitely time to look at the PTAB closely and see what can be done to make it operate more fairly. While he reiterated several times he is only acting and a permanent replacement has been nominated, he said that he would be surprised if this didn’t happen.

Mark Lopreiato, the inventor of the Forearm Forklift, recorded sales of $4 million in 2008 but since then has seen a 30% drop, which he attributes to cheap replicas available on eBay and Amazon. In point of fact, there have been a number of examples of innovative companies suffering from the sale of replicas on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. In extreme cases, global brands like Birkenstock have stopped business with Amazon and other e-commerce retailers altogether. Sustained pressure on e-commerce sites from both professional and governmental bodies have yielded some results in recent years, with almost every major site now offering some level of IP protection tool or process. This also serves the interest of bigger sites as Amazon, eBay and their Chinese counterpart Alibaba are shielded from legal liability, provided they can offer a timely takedown service for IP owners.

The most recent notorious markets report from the USTR seems to have further galvanized Alibaba into taking action to reduce the number of counterfeit products sold on its e-commerce platforms. In early January, Alibaba filed its first pair of lawsuits targeting retailers selling fake Swarovski watches on the company’s e-commerce platforms. Then in late February, Alibaba released an official corporate statement in which it blamed China’s ambiguous counterfeiting laws for contributing to the problem… Alibaba’s statement goes so far as to equate counterfeiting to drunk driving in terms of how strongly such actions should be criminalized.

Now with smartphones always-on and within reach 24/7, the way businesses need to communicate information to customers is through their mobile devices. And statistics show that the preferred method for reaching customers by their phones is via text message. For example, 70 percent of customers say texts are a good way to get their attention, and 90 percent of customers will open a text message within three minutes of receiving it, according to mobilesquared, an industry analysis firm.

Alibaba is a highly valuable organization doing business in a market that could be described as a combination of the markets addressed by eBay, Amazon, PayPal, and Google. Alibaba.com started as a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with buyers all over the world. In September 2014, the conglomerate of web portals became the world’s largest IPO, valued at over US$230 billion.