Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce business, has criticized a reported lawsuit filed Friday in New York by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and other brands owned by Kering SA that alleges it knowingly allows the sale of fakes on its websites.
"We continue to work in partnership with numerous brands to help them protect their intellectual property, and we have a strong track record of doing so,” an Alibaba spokeswoman said in a written statement this morning. “Unfortunately, Kering Group has chosen the path of wasteful litigation instead of the path of constructive cooperation. We believe this complaint has no basis and we will fight it vigorously."
Alibaba and its entities “provide the marketplace advertising and other essential services necessary for counterfeiters to sell their counterfeit products to customers in the United States,” the lawsuit says, according to a report in the South China Morning Post yesterday.
According to a Alibaba Group fact sheet, the company has a “zero-tolerance policy” toward fakes on its sites, and cooperated in more than 1,000 counterfeiting cases last year. Though long criticized by others for not doing enough to stop the sale of counterfeits, Alibaba has also attracted many top multinational sellers to its sites, prominent among which this month included Disney.
Alibaba’s New York-traded shares are down a quarter off from highs reached after a world-record IPO last September, but gained more than 11% since May 5 after the company reported increased revenue in its latest quarter and named a new CEO Daniel Zhang.
Zhang next month is poised to become chairman of Alibaba-backed mall operator Intime, an Intime statement today said. (See story here.)
--Follow me on Twitter @rflannerychina
