Alibaba has been known to be one of the biggest companies in the world. This online retail magnate has recently improved their company by hiring a former Apple investigator.
According to CNBC, the company hired a former counterfeit investigator as the one in charge of removing all counterfeit goods that are being sold in e-commerce platforms. At the moment, there is an ongoing criticism from some regulators about this.
Alibaba appointed Matthew Bassiur as the head of global intellectual property enforcement effective January 2016. He will lead a team that will work closely with international brands, some retail partners, law enforcement and other groups and organizations that could help the company against counterfeiting and intellectual property rights protection efforts.
Prior to being appointed by Alibaba, Bassiur came from pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer. He also was responsible in overseeing the counterfeit operations. Before that, he was with Apple.
In a press release, executive chairman Jack Ma said, "We will continue to be relentless in our long-term commitment to protect both consumers and intellectual property rights owners, and we call on all companies in our industry to join our fight against bad actors."
This appointment came after the company avoided to be put on a U.S. blacklist for the websites selling fake goods. The U.S. Trade Representative said that they were increasingly concerned about how the company's ways to handle and tackle counterfeit products and that there are more things that needs to be done.
This appointment is very important to the company as they have plans to expand the business into international markets and get more revenue from this new market and not just their usual home market.
The company has been trying a lot of ways to fight against counterfeit products on their retail sites in order to help with their international expansion. TaoProtect was released earlier this year which is an intellectual property reporting system.
It was released in English in order to make it easier for International retailers to report any counterfeit goods to Alibaba. The company has volunteers and about 2,000 employees that are dedicated to help find and report fake goods. Not only that, this year the company hired about 300 people to form a specialized group to handle counterfeit products.
