Recently, the attorneys of Bridge IPR Commentary were interviewed by “China Intellectual Property “, an IPR magazine in China, and the details are as follows:
1. Taobao Market and Tmall are both the separate channels of Taobao, and Tmall was established after Market and now have its own domain name. Then is there any difference between Taobao Market and Tmall?
Unlike the stores in the Market applied by individual merchants with a relatively low threshold, the qualification for Tmall is much stricter for only licensed corporations could run the business in it, furthermore, the service of changing or refunding, after service and invoice are also demanded. Currently, the famous brands operating in Tmall include Lenovo, Haier, Nike and other well-known brands, which are similar to brand stores guaranteeing in service quality.
2. What responsibility should Taobao bear when there selling infringing products in Tmall?
Merchants shall first pay some management fee to Taobao before they operating in Tmall. However, Tmall shall be the internet service provider by law, which is essentially the same as Taobao market. While, due to the its charges and the brand verification, Tmall shall take more examination obligation than Market, for example, it should make the initiative examination on any possible infringing products rather than waiting for report from the comsumers.
3. Could the liability of Tmall be different from those taken by B2C platform, like the well-known online store Dangdang Inc. (NYSE: DANG) in China?
The direct difference of liability from the B2C platform shall be that Tmall is most likely to take indirect liability of infringement and a relatively low compensation instead of a direct infringement liability which shall be borne by the direct online selling platform like Dangdang Inc. in the same situation.
Author: Mr. Luo Yanjie
Attorney-at-law of DeBund Law Offices
Co-author: Mr. You Yunting
Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Bridge IPR Commentary
Partner & Attorney-at-law of Shanghai DeBund Law Offices
Email: Bridge@chinaiplawyer.com, Tel: 8621-5213-4900,
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