You might feel hopeless after seeing a seller using your images or designs on AliExpress. Maybe you feel like you can’t do anything about an AliExpress copyright infringement since the site is based in China.
That sentiment might have rung true a few years ago. However, Alibaba, which owns AliExpress, has been improving its IP takedown procedures.
You can use the Alibaba International IP Protection Program to upload your IP and submit takedowns, and the vast majority are reviewed in a day. But it’s important to follow the platform’s instructions carefully to improve your chances.
At Red Points, we’ve enforced over 621,000 infringements on AliExpress to date. Our AI-powered brand protection software scans AliExpress for infringements in product listing data and photos and removes them automatically. Thanks to our strong partnership with the platform, we increased takedowns by 56% from 2023 to 2024.
If you want to stop fake sellers, read on to learn how to report an infringement on AliExpress and multiply your efforts with Red Points.
What’s AliExpress’ counterfeit policy?
Alibaba takes counterfeit claims seriously to maintain a safe ecommerce environment. Having reviewed the platform over multiple years, we think their reputation has increased in this aspect. Today, Alibaba has three principles:
- Efficient takedown procedures
- Proactive removal, and
- Stakeholder collaboration.
The group collaborates with organizations like the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) and formed the Alibaba Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance.
According to its policy, eligible complaints on the platform include:
- Trademark infringement like the misuse of identical or confusingly similar marks.
- Copyright infringement like the sale of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works, including books, music, videos, software, video games, television programs, paintings, and photographs, as well as unauthorized use of a third party’s copyrighted photographs in seller listings.
- Patent infringement, including invention and design patents.
According to Alibaba’s Intellectual Property Rights Protection report in 2024, 96% of IP notices are processed within 24 hours on business days. The group also implemented its own AI takedown method, which proactively takes down three times more infringing listings than reactive methods.
We noticed Alibaba improved its online platform in August of 2024 to make it easier for rights holders to report infringements. We’ll walk you through how to use it next.
How to report copyright infringement on AliExpress
Where there’s one counterfeit, there are probably many more. While removing a counterfeit listing is possible to do by yourself, it quickly becomes an impossible task when dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of counterfeit listings begin manifesting on ecommerce sites. In the latter case, we recommend you to get an Anti Counterfeit Software But if you’re a small business and have reason to believe that only one or two counterfeit listings of your products exist, then your best option is to follow the below steps.
Step 1: Register on the Alibaba International IP Protection Platform
The first step is to visit the Alibaba IP Protection Platform and create an account. You’ll just need an email at this stage.
Step 2: Verify your account
After signing up, you’ll see your dashboard in the IP Protection Platform, but you can’t do anything. You have to first verify your contact information by clicking on the link under Account Setting.
Step 2: Submit your Intellectual Property to their registry
Then, add your name and email address again to verify your contact in the platform. You can also add your phone number. Alibaba will send this contact information to the complaint recipient.
Step 3: Submit your Intellectual Property to their registry
Alibaba’s process works by first having you list your intellectual property (IP) on their site, which they will use against infringing listings on the marketplace. Go back to your home page in your IP Protection Platform account and click IPR Submission under My IPR.
Most types of IP will need to be already registered. The Alibaba Group of sites is less forgiving with this than other sites, such as eBay and Amazon, so if your IP is unregistered or pending completion, you’ll need to finish that process before AliEexpress will remove infringements for you. However, you can enforce an unregistered copyright by providing a Copyright Claim Statement. You can download this through the platform.
Alibaba and its affiliate websites are China-based. While they do recognise foreign IP registrations, and will take down counterfeit listings from their site based on foreign IP, this entire process can go smoother if your IP is also registered separately in China. You should do this even if China is not a target market for your company.
Submissions are entered one at a time, which makes this quite a slow process if you have a large catalogue, but the next stage will go much faster.
We’ve made a list of the information and documents you’ll need for each type of submission:
Trademark Infringement
- Trademark certificate
- Trademark certificate pages for trademark classes
Copyright Infringement
- Name of the work
- Uploadable instances of the work and supporting certifications
- Serial/Registration number of the work you submitted
- Copyright holder of the work you submitted
Patent
- Uploadable patent certificate
- Type of patent (Patent for invention, Patent for design, Patent for utility model)
- Name of the patent you submitted
- Registration number of the patent you submitted
- Rights holder of the patent you submitted
- Expiration date of the patent you submitted
Others
- Name and number of your IP
- Right holder of the IP
- Period of validity
- Uploadable IP content, supporting documents
Note that if you aren’t the rights holder, you must also submit a letter of authorization that shows the rights holder granting permission.
Also, Alibaba’s platform has a thorough help section at the IPR Protection Guide link from the home screen. It walks you through the steps for registering to the platform, registering your IP, and submitting complaints for copyright, trademark, and patent infringements.
Step 4: Submit a complaint
So, here’s the part that’s actually going to help; the complaint. Navigate back to your home page in the platform and click Submit a Complaint in the left-hand sidebar.
You’ll select the complaint website first—Alibaba, AliExpress, or Lazada. Then, you’ll fill in details like the type of complaint, reason, and supplemental materials along with links to infringing listings.
Step 5: Monitor and follow up
This process shouldn’t take too long. Alibaba reviews IP submissions and takedown requests within three days each. The owner of the counterfeit listing will have up to 3 days to respond to the takedown request, after which time, the website will remove the product automatically, unless the complaint is indeed challenged. The first appeal adds another three days to the timeline while two more appeals add seven days each.
During this time you can view the progress of your notices under Manage Complaints from your dashboard. You’ll see a table with details, platform, IP, status, and actions for each complaint.
You can click into any complaint to see more details, like a timeline of actions and seller information.
The platform will show the exact status of each complaint and the actions you can take. The seller is able to appeal a notice a maximum of three times, but the platform usually rejects their appeal automatically after one time. In some cases, the platform can accept the seller’s appeal. You’ll have to provide more details to get the listing taken down.
Also, it’s important to follow instructions carefully. The platform can reject your notice if the listing URLs aren’t properly formatted or you’ve included duplicate URLs. You can submit up to 300 URLs in a single notice but you can’t resubmit any URLs that are part of an active notice.
Good Faith Platform
Users who find themselves frequently reporting infringement and counterfeit listings will find this next part useful. If you repeatedly report fake products, counterfeits and copyright infringement, and they are confirmed as illegal repeatedly by Alibaba/Taobao, then you may join the Good Faith Program, which will help to speed up this process in future instances.
If you’re left confused by this guide, or if there’s anything we’ve missed, we’d be happy to clear up any queries. Just send us a message at marketing@redpoints.com and we’ll do what we can to help.
Counterfeiters use a range of platforms to sell their knock-offs. To stay protected on each, follow our guides:
- How to report trademark infringements on Amazon.
- How to report a seller on eBay.
- How to report a counterfeit on Taobao, TMall and TMall Global
- How to report intellectual property infringements on Etsy.
Have you found more Aliexpress counterfeits than you can deal with?
Red Points is the most-trusted AI brand protection platform on the market. Using our cutting-edge technology and first-class service, we protect companies whose brands become inundated with online counterfeits and infringement on AliExpress. Every counterfeit product diminishes your brand reputation and steals your sales. We are here to help you recover that lost revenue by protecting your brand from counterfeiters.
That’s where Red Points’ Counterfeit Protection Solution comes in. This software automatically scans ecommerce marketplaces 24/7, detects IP infringements, and sends out automated takedown requests which – from our experience – can number in their thousands. The software uses machine learning and image recognition technology to detect and report IP infringements across the web. Below is a step-by-step process of how Red Points’ Counterfeit Protection Solution works.
Monitoring
Scammers are constantly finding ways to create counterfeit versions of branded products. The web is a large place, and counterfeits can pop up anyway. Red Points scans online marketplaces on an hourly basis. You can keep an eye on the hourly results via the Red Points’ dashboard.
Detection
Red Points will then use image recognition technology to scan product listings for trademark and patent infringements of your brand. Also with machine-learning abilities, this software is able to become increasingly accurate in finding counterfeits posing as your brand across the net.
You can see below (1) the number of alerts, infringements, and cases ready for you to evaluate, while (2) gives you an overview of exactly where these counterfeits are appearing on the web.
Validation & Prioritization
You can customize your automation rules so that Red Points knows what to do when it comes across counterfeits on the web. The results will also be organized into categories, with (1) being the tasks you need to attend to, and (2) high risk incidents that require your attention.
Enforcement
Red Points automatically files takedown requests of listings or profiles that violate your brand’s IP, so that you don’t have to. You can keep track of the enforcements and other statistics on your dashboard. C
ompared to last year, we improved enforcement time by 22%. Overall, it takes two days on average to remove an infringement on AliExpress through our platform.
Reporting
In the Economic Impact section of the dashboard, you can view just how much money Red Points has saved your brand by getting rid of counterfeits. You can also view other statistics, such as the number of counterfeiters compromising your brand, the average price of a counterfeit, and so on. To date, we’ve enforced over $848 million worth of AliExpress infringements.
What’s next
It’s easy to feel powerless after having spotted counterfeits on AliExpress. If you don’t take care of the issue and fight back, counterfeiters will know they can continue to profit off your brand.
You can report infringements with Alibaba IP Protection Platform, which the company has improved in recent years. However, infringements on the platform continue to surge.
That’s why it can be helpful to have someone fighting in your corner. AliExpress copyright infringements can come up over and over especially if you only enforce your IP once in a while.
At Red Points, our AI-powered platform constantly scans AliExpress for illegal use of your images and product designs. This means we can enforce repeat infringements automatically and effectively deter counterfeiters.
You don’t have to sit by as someone across the world scams customers with fake products. Reach out today for a demo to see how Red Points can secure your IP on AliExpress.
