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 global retail marketplace as well as Taobao Marketplace, 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 solution 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.