The U.S. commerce consultant’s workplace mentioned Thursday the 2 corporations had been among the many 42 on-line markets and 35 bodily markets which can be reported to interact in or facilitate a considerable marketplace for counterfeit items or copyright piracy.
The company mentioned there was a big improve in counterfeit items provided on the market on AliExpress,
Alibaba’s
BABA -1.58%
business-to-consumer e-commerce platform that sells Chinese language items to patrons around the globe. Its choices embrace items which can be blatantly marketed as counterfeit, in addition to items which can be falsely marketed as real, the USTR mentioned, based mostly on reviews from mental rights holders of merchandise.
Tencent’s WeChat e-commerce system, together with that of its China-facing model referred to as Weixin, has emerged as one of many largest platforms for counterfeit items in China, the USTR mentioned. Of explicit concern there, it mentioned, is it seamlessly features inside the total WeChat platform that facilitates the distribution and sale of counterfeit merchandise.
“The USTR highlights sure on-line and bodily markets as a result of they exemplify international counterfeiting and piracy issues and since the dimensions of infringing exercise in these markets could cause important hurt to U.S. IP house owners, staff, customers, and the financial system,” the company mentioned within the report, with IP referring to mental property.
The most recent record consists of entities which have made the record in years previous, together with Alibaba’s Taobao, certainly one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms that sells a variety of merchandise together with clothes, shopper electronics and meals gadgets.
Whereas Taobao made enhancements in its anticounterfeiting processes and instruments throughout its platform, U.S. corporations with mental property rights say the efforts haven’t led to a lower in gross sales of counterfeit gadgets, in accordance with the USTR.
Alibaba mentioned that the corporate is dedicated to IP safety. “We stay up for persevering with the work with governments to grasp and deal with all issues in IP safety throughout our platforms,” Alibaba mentioned.
Baidu Wangpan, the cloud-storage service operated by Chinese language search engine big
Baidu Inc.,
additionally made a repeat look on the record. IP rights holders have complained that the service permits customers to share hyperlinks to pirated films, TV exhibits and books saved on their accounts, infringing on their copyrights.
A Tencent spokesman mentioned the corporate strongly disagrees with the USTR’s determination and that it’s working collaboratively to resolve the matter. “We take a complete method, based mostly on trade greatest practices, to combating counterfeiting and infringement on all of our platforms,” he mentioned.
Baidu didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Movement Image Affiliation, a Hollywood commerce group, welcomed the most recent report, saying it “calls out probably the most prison international enterprises that revenue from the unauthorized distribution of artistic content material on the expense of creators, whereas preying on customers at each flip.”
The reviews and lists revealed by the U.S. commerce consultant’s workplace have the impact of naming and shaming corporations and international locations that allegedly don’t take steps to cease counterfeiters, however they don’t set official U.S. coverage.
The record is compiled based mostly on publicly out there data and has been revealed yearly since 2011.
Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com
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