Help us fight fakes, Alibabaasks global brands

Contd..

When it comes to fighting fakes, Alibaba's head of internet security says cooperation beatshe courtroom any day .Ni Liang, who runs the Hangzhou, China-based company's anti-counterfeit ng operations, was speaking days after Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and otherluxury brands owned by Parisbased Kering SA sued Alibaba in New York, alleging the e-commerce giant had knowingly made it possible for counterfeiters to sell fakes.

Ni said brands had a better chance of succeeding in clamping down on the pervasivecounterfeit trade if they talked to Alibaba, instead of suing it. The company has beendogged for years by accusations that it doesn't do enough to fight intellectual propertyrights violations and also listed counterfeits as a risk before its recordbreaking $25 billionIPO in September.

“I strongly believe that spending money on lawsuits could result in a completely differentoutcome than cooperating with us,“ Ni said.

“If a brand doesn't cooperate with us we'll still fight fakes for them... But when wecooperate we can fight better.“

Alibaba employs some 2,000 employees to battle counterfeits.