AAFA Calls on USTR to Add Chinese Website Taobao to 'Notorious Markets' List
The American Apparel and Footwear Association urged the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to list Alibaba Group and its “constituent platforms, including Taobao” in its 2016 Notorious Markets Report, citing a Chinese government study finding a 67 percent counterfeit rate of goods sold on that platform. In a letter to Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Innovation and Intellectual Property Probir Mehta (here), AAFA Executive Vice President Stephen Lamar said his organization’s investigative monitoring of certain brands on Taobao show counterfeits surfacing in about half of the search results. “Any review of Taobao on a daily basis will find listings for dozens of AAFA member brands at absurdly low prices -- a strong indication that such merchandise is counterfeit,” Lamar said. “Our members who engage in constant monitoring of Alibaba platforms regularly and continuously report widespread proliferation of counterfeits.” USTR did not deem Taobao a Notorious Market in its 2015 report, after the company was last listed in 2012, but USTR last year noted its increasing concern about the slowness, difficulty and opaqueness of Alibaba’s intellectual property rights enforcement program (see 1512170016).
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Despite several enforcement assurances Alibaba provided after USTR’s 2015 Notorious Markets report, the company hasn’t provided clear evidence that it is cracking down on counterfeits, as it unevenly applies burdensome takedown procedures, the trade group said. The AAFA’s submission for USTR’s 2016 Notorious Markets review named 17 total online markets that should be added to the list, as well 30 physical markets in India, 23 in China, 12 in Uruguay, 10 in Thailand, nine in Turkey, five in Ukraine, four in Vietnam, three in Mexico, two in the United Arab Emirates, one in Georgia, one in Russia and one in Spain. “Counterfeiting … hurts workers who are exposed to poor working conditions and other workplace hazards in the factories that make counterfeit goods, and ... consumers by subjecting them to inferior quality or unsafe products,” the group said.