Alibaba’s Counterfeit Dilemma

Alibaba’s Counterfeit Dilemma

Shenzhen Special Zone Daily August 8

On August 5, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel dismissed a lawsuit filed by Paris-based Kering, a luxury brand group that includes Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, accusing Alibaba, China’s ecommerce giant, of promoting the sale of counterfeit goods.

The lawsuit claimed that Alibaba and 14 companies selling counterfeit goods on its online marketplaces joined to form an enterprise that knowingly encouraged, assisted, and profited from the sale of illegal wares. Castel ruled that the lawsuit failed to allege the existence of such an enterprise under the U.S. federal racketeering law, as it did not establish whether the merchants were aware of each other or that Alibaba could have agreed to carry out actions with them.

The U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act provides for extended criminal penalties and a cause of civil action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization. It allows not only the individual criminal, but also the criminal syndicate to be tried. If convicted, Alibaba would have been gravely hit.

An online marketplace is duty-bound to scrutinize those who do business on the platform. It’s easy to allege facts to sustain a claim that Alibaba failed in monitoring its services. But in practice, it is quite difficult to prove that Alibaba has formed an alliance with counterfeiters.

Steering clear of the racketeering claim doesn’t mean that Alibaba can ease its monitoring and rules against counterfeiting. Instead, all online shopping sites should enforce a zerotolerance policy toward fakes.

ü WRONGLY IMPRISONED EX-NURSE COMPENSATED

Qian Renfeng, a woman who spent 13 years behind bars under a wrongful murder conviction, was granted 1.72 million yuan ($258,300) in state compensation on August 9.

Qian, then a nurse in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 after food poisoning at the nursery where she worked left a child dead and two others hospitalized. Qian was charged with mixing the children’s food with rat poison.

Qian continued to petition for her innocence, claiming her confession was made under duress. She was exonerated in December last year, when the Higher People’s Court of Yunnan Province ruled that it lacked sufficient evidence to determine guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Qian, 31, found a job after her release and currently works in Guangzhou, south China’s Guangdong Province.

“Weibo is benefiting from the strong adoption of social marketing.”

Wang Gaofei, Weibo CEO, commenting on the Chinese microblogging service’s better-than-expected performance in the second quarter this year, during which it raked in net revenue of $146.9 million, according to a newly released report

“Illegal mining is the principal reason for gloominess in the industry.”

Zhou Changyi, an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, pledging regulatory measures to help reinvigorate China’s rare earth industry at a forum in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on August 8