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Alibaba Group and China's International Publishers Copyright Protection Coalition Strengthen Cooperation to Combat Online Infringement
[June 24, 2015]

Alibaba Group and China's International Publishers Copyright Protection Coalition Strengthen Cooperation to Combat Online Infringement


Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) and The International Publishers Copyright Protection Coalition in China (IPCC) today announced they have strengthened their collaboration through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

The MoU broadens the scope of an earlier agreement signed in August 2011. Under the new MoU, the parties will cooperate to combat copyright infringement on the AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com) global retail marketplace as well as Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com), China's largest online shopping destination. Both AliExpress and Taobao Marketplace are owned by Alibaba Group. The IPCC includes 17 leading international publishers.

To strengthen the protection of the intellectual property rights of IPCC member organizations, Alibaba Group and the IPCC will collaborate more closely through regular communication and exchange of information. In addition, the IPCC will assist Alibaba Group to identify product listings of potentially infringing products offered for sale by third parties on Taobao Marketplace or AliExpress, and Taobao Marketplace and AliExpress will take appropriate actions to remove such infringing products.

"The MoU is a significant step towards safeguarding the interests of rights owners in the Internet space, and we thank the IPCC - an important industry body in the publishing sector in China - for their active involvement and continued trust in us. As our business ecosystem encompasses an increasingly diverse range of online sellers, it is more important now than ever for us to be able to join forces with partners and stakeholders to effectively identify and take down infringers," said Ni Liang, Alibaba Group's Senior Director of Intellectual Property Protection.

"The large scale and rapid growth of the e-commerce environment requires continuous and stronger collaboration with platform operators to effectively battle IPR infringement activities," said Hugo Zhang, Chairman of the IPCC. "The deepening of our partnership with Alibaba Group is the next logical step to not just protect the legal interests of our community of global publishers, but those of Chinese and international consumers as well."

"In today's ever-changing IPR environment, we believe direct dialogue between publishers and e-commerce platform operators to discover and tackle emerging issues is the olution that is in the best interest of the parties," said a representative of the Copyright Management Bureau of the National Copyright Administration of the People's Republic of China, commenting on the strengthened collaboration between Alibaba Group and the IPCC.



Alibaba Group's cooperation with the IPCC dates back to December 2010 when the parties rolled out a special joint-program specific to Taobao Marketplace that resulted in the removal of close to 1,000 pirated publications. Subsequent to the signing of the 2011 MoU, Alibaba Group has offered training workshops on the use of its intellectual property infringement reporting system to various IPCC members.

The signing of the new MoU underscores both Alibaba Group and the IPCC's intent to establish a long-term strategic partnership to promote the healthy operation of the e-commerce environment.


About Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group's mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company is the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume. Founded in 1999, the company provides the fundamental technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help businesses leverage the power of the Internet to establish an online presence and conduct commerce with hundreds of millions of consumers and other businesses.

Alibaba Group's major businesses include:

  • Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com), China's largest online shopping destination
  • Tmall.com (www.tmall.com), China's largest third-party platform for brands and retailers
  • Juhuasuan (www.juhuasuan.com), China's most popular online group buying marketplace
  • Alitrip (www.alitrip.com), a leading online travel booking platform
  • AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), a global online marketplace for consumers to buy directly from China
  • Alibaba.com (www.alibaba.com), China's largest global online wholesale platform for small businesses
  • 1688.com (www.1688.com), a leading online wholesale marketplace in China
  • Aliyun (www.aliyun.com), a provider of cloud computing services to businesses and entrepreneurs

About The International Publishers Copyright Protection Coalition in China (IPCC)

The International Publishers Copyright Protection Coalition in China (IPCC) is a voluntary and not-for-profit coalition of representative offices of international publishers in China with the aim to protect its members' copyright, raise social awareness of copyright protection, and effectively prevent and fight against infringement by working with the governments, international trade associations and other stakeholders. Founded in 2010, IPCC's mission is Dialogue, Cooperation and Win-win. It is supported by The Publishers Association (UK) and the Association of American Publishers.

IPCC's member companies include Elsevier, Springer, Wolters Kluwer, Emerald, IEEE (News - Alert), Oxford University Press (OUP), ProQuest Information and Learning, Taylor & Francis, Pearson, Wiley, Macmillan, Cengage, Institute of Physics (IOP), Sage, British Medical Journal (BMJ), Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and Brill.


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