On September 20, the General Administration of Market Supervision held a centralized signing activity of the Self discipline Convention on Improving the Protection Level of Intellectual Property Rights for E-commerce Platform Operators (hereinafter referred to as the Self discipline Convention), and 81 platforms, including Taotian Group, Pinduoduo, Tiktok, Tencent, Xiaohongshu, JD, and Dewu, signed the Convention.
The Self Discipline Convention mainly refines the platform complaint rules for intellectual property rights holders, requiring platforms to establish convenient and smooth channels for rights protection and response, timely review complaint evidence, and publish them uniformly on the rights protection page.
Counterfeiting and infringement have always been a headache for e-commerce platforms, and cracking down on counterfeiting and infringement has also been a compliance focus for platforms and regulatory authorities in recent years. In 2022, the State Administration for Market Regulation took the lead in launching the "Special Action for Network Market Supervision" to crack down on "three fake live broadcasts" (fake popularity, fake discounts, and fake products); In April of this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the "Implementation Plan for the Special Law Enforcement Action of 'Protecting Intellectual Property Rights'", launching a two-year special action nationwide.
Refine a series of rights protection rules
In the 2021 report "New Developments in China's Online Counterfeiting and Piracy Issues: Legislation, Cases, and Practice," the IP Key project of China Europe cooperation on intellectual property pointed out that combating counterfeiting and piracy remains a challenge. On the one hand, the challenge comes from the new scenario of live streaming sales, and many e-commerce platforms have not yet taken effective measures; On the other hand, although most e-commerce platforms have established infringement complaint systems, complaints like emails take a long time and are not effectively handled.
The Self Discipline Convention launched this time consists of ten articles, with a focus on a series of rights protection rules for rights holders.
The Self Discipline Convention first mentions that the platform should establish a smooth channel for accepting infringement notifications, which can include the platform's online complaint system, complaint acceptance email, complaint acceptance letter and other addresses.
In terms of complaint evidence, on the rights protection page of the rights holder, the platform needs to provide a detailed list of evidence requirements and complete the evidence review of the rights holder in a timely manner. And platform operators can submit evidence that there is no infringement, and the platform will forward this to the complainant. If the platform believes that the complaint evidence is sufficient, it needs to take reasonable and necessary measures, including deleting, blocking, and disconnecting links.
It is worth noting that the Self Discipline Convention particularly emphasizes the cooperation between platforms and administrative law enforcement departments. For example, when the market supervision and management department investigates infringement cases, the platform needs to provide data materials. For those listed in the list of abnormal operators by the market supervision department, the platform needs to notify the merchants within 3 working days and update their qualifications, licenses, contact information, and other information in a timely manner.
The E-commerce Law stipulates the obligation of platforms to govern infringement, for example, Article 45 stipulates that if a platform knows that a merchant has infringed intellectual property rights but fails to take necessary measures, the platform shall bear joint and several liability with the infringer. This' Self discipline Convention 'is a further refinement of the' Electronic Commerce Law '. The relevant person in charge of the State Administration for Market Regulation stated that by organizing various e-commerce platforms to sign conventions, they hope to urge major platforms to pay more attention to their intellectual property protection obligations and crack down on infringement and counterfeiting.
At present, there are a total of 81 e-commerce platforms that have signed the Self Discipline Convention, which basically covers the applications used by consumers in their daily lives. 23 platforms including JD, Taotian, Tencent, Tiktok, Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, Hema, and Dewu were signed on site.
Stock competition, multiple platforms emphasize business quality
In fact, in recent years, cracking down on counterfeit and infringing goods has always been a compliance priority for platforms and regulatory authorities. Among the companies present, Taotian Group, Tiktok, Tencent and Pinduoduo introduced how to deal with infringement.
The reporter noticed that several platforms mentioned using automatic monitoring systems to combat infringement during the meeting.
Tencent stated that the current approach is mainly to conduct pre inspection and in-process inspection. In terms of qualification review, Tencent has established qualification requirements for over 2000 sub categories. Last year, it intercepted more than 100000 applications from merchants to join, and rejected a total of 1 million suspected counterfeit goods merchants throughout the year. Personal accounts, circles of friends, official account, applets, and live video rooms are all within the monitoring range.
How accurate and effective are these tools? The two sets of data mentioned by Tencent show that the accuracy rate of infringement clue identification tools was 38% in 2020 and increased to 75% in 2023. The monitoring scale is very considerable. In the video account scene, more than 77000 fake live streaming rooms were dealt with last year, and more than 25000 anchors were punished.
Tiktok said that since its IP Pro complaint handling platform was launched in 2021, it has provided rights protection services for more than 50000 obligees and 80000 intellectual property filing qualifications.
The importance of platform operation quality has also been mentioned multiple times. Pinduoduo stated that the competition in the e-commerce industry has shifted from incremental competition to stock competition, from quantity competition to quality competition, and from external business competition to internal ecological competition, with the situation becoming increasingly fierce. Some major companies have admitted that intellectual property is a very important indicator for assessing the quality of platform operations, and multiple platforms have invested heavily in human and financial resources related to it.
It should be noted that the Self Discipline Convention is not a mandatory standard and is a voluntary commitment. The regulatory authorities will continue to track the fulfillment of commitments, and for platforms that violate their commitments, they will be regulated according to relevant laws. The aforementioned person in charge stated that they hope more platforms will join in the next step; Market regulatory departments at all levels should closely monitor the implementation of the Self Discipline Convention, strengthen guidance and supervision on platforms, especially in cooperating with rights holders to protect their rights and cooperating with market departments to enforce the law. It is required to promote the implementation as soon as possible.