Alibaba plea to US: don't blacklist us again

Alibaba is conducting an all-out charm offensive in the US to ensure that it remains off a notorious piracy blacklist.

Alibaba, China’s largest internal e-commerce platform, has written to the US Trade Representative (USTR) office to highlight recent efforts it has undertaken to protect intellectual property.

In the publicly-viewable letter it highlights a new mechanism is aimed at accelerating requests from brands for fake merchandise to be taken off Alibaba’s platforms, whilst also saying it has "gone above and beyond" in dealing with the problem, placing the overall policing responsibility onto brand owners.

This comes as the USTR begins to look at its annual list of the world's most notorious markets for sales of pirated and counterfeit goods.

Some in the industry believe that Alibaba may once again be included on the list as a slew of criticism has hit the company this year, as it struggles to deal with the issue of fakes being bought and sold across its platforms.

Being put back on the list does not carry a financial penalty, but would be a major blow to its anti-piracy PR push of the past two years - it would also likely hit Alibaba’s share price.

Two Alibaba sites - the B2B platform Alibaba.com and Taobao marketplace - were on the USTR's Notorious Markets list from 2008. But Alibaba.com was removed in 2011 while Taobao was taken off in 2012.

It’s not just in the US where the company is facing increased scrutiny - in January the Chinese government regulator accused Alibaba of a lack of oversight that allowed the sale of counterfeit goods on its sites - accusations which at the time Alibaba called "unfair".

Next week (October 27) the firm releases key quarterly earnings release for the fiscal year 2016, as analysts expect to see a further drop in sales as the economic slowdown in China continues to bite. A return to the blacklist could also hit any future earnings.