AAFA Urges U.S. Government To Add Taobao.com To Notorious Markets List

The American Apparel & Footwear Association isurging the United States Trade Representative to add Taobao.com back to the notorious markets list, due to Alibaba's ineffective crackdown on fake goods on its e-commerce platform.

Taobao was put on the list in 2011, but removed in 2012 after Alibaba made efforts to address the concerns of intellectual property rights holders.

In July 2015, AAFA issued an open letter to Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, complaining that Alibaba's websites were ineffective in removing fake goods. In response to the open letter, Alibaba's senior manager for intellectual property rights protection and innovation Wang Bo said that Alibaba had explained its intellectual property rights protection program to AAFA several times and provided detailed files; however, they did not receive any feedback from AAFA.

Wang said at the time they did not understand for what reasons that AAFA held Alibaba accountable. At the same time, Alibaba said that AAFA needed to strengthen its Chinese communications ability.

Juanita Duggan, president of AAFA, said in a recent news release that their members found it is hard to work with Taobao.com to solve fake goods problems and those illegal products continue to spread.

Commenting on this, Alibaba's spokesperson told Chinese media that the group is committed to protecting intellectual property rights and has implemented a long-term fight against fake goods on their platforms. They took extensive measures to prevent the sales of fake goods on their platforms.

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