Alibaba Wields Big Data In Fight Against Counterfeits

Alibaba is combating the growing threat of pirates and counterfeiters with the help of could computing.

The Chinese eCommerce giant said that its own Operation “Cloud Sword” led to the arrest of more than 300 counterfeit gang member suspects in 164 investigations.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, counterfeit and pirated goods make up a $461 billion business globally.

With its rank as the world’s leading manufacturing center for authentic products, China has not surprisingly become a top source of counterfeits entering the market. Matthew Bassiur, head of global intellectual property enforcement at Alibaba Group, explained that the company is committed to identifying and eliminating these bad actors from its platform.

In a piece on Recode, he said Alibaba is taking a “more holistic and technology-driven IPR-enforcement approach,” which involves a new app that’s designed to discern data patterns to better track down and expose counterfeiters.

“This is making it much more difficult for these illicit actors to hide,” he added.

Last year, Alibaba launched a three-month pilot program called “Cloud Sword” to help improve its data modeling and increase accuracy in deleting counterfeit products from its platform.

“We also improved our network DNA source-tracing to more effectively crack down on counterfeit sellers and their entire supply chain, from upstream to downstream,” Bassiur said. “At the same time, we increased our data quality, enhancing the management of leads for cases we bring to the authorities.”

The program involved 11 cities across the Zhejiang Province and provided the Zhejiang Province Economic Investigation Team with 385 leads, which led to the arrest of 300 suspects under 169 separate cases.