Kristina Montanaro Schrader, Adams and Reese Anti-Counterfeiting Team Leader and intellectual property attorney in the firm’s Nashville office, was quoted in an April 27th Wall Street Journal piece titled “Brands Voice Doubt After Alibaba Joins Group Fighting Fake Goods.” The article reports on widespread brand backlash following Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s recent admission into the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) earlier in April.
Schrader is paraphrased in the article: “Alibaba’s efforts to take counterfeit listings off of its multiple sites are a ‘drop in the bucket compared to the grand scale of the problem,’” she said. The WSJ piece discusses how high-profile brands such as Michael Kors and Longchamp, as well as Unifab, a French anti-counterfeiting coalition, have criticized the recent admission of Alibaba into the IACC, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group of around 250 corporate members founded with a mission to combat counterfeiting and piracy. The backlash stems from collective market skepticism over Alibaba’s sincerity in tackling its massive counterfeit problem, which spans across its eCommerce platforms, including Taobao.com.
Schrader, who joined Adams and Reese in 2015 as the firm’s Anti-Counterfeiting Team Leader, previously worked as an executive at the IACC and maintains a close watch on developments in the anti-counterfeiting industry. She has significant experience crafting and executing modern intellectual property enforcement strategies for many of the world’s best-known brands. She has negotiated voluntary agreements on behalf of rights-holders and developed alliances with various intermediaries and major payment processors to improve responsiveness to rights-holders’ reports of online infringement.
“Many rights-holders feel that collaborative programs with intermediaries like Alibaba can have major impact, and we should keep negotiations open for that reason,” Schrader added. “Alibaba’s membership with IACC may well turn out to be a positive development for rights-holders, but it’s clearly not enough for Alibaba to merely point its IACC membership whenever individual rights-holders, government officials, and others raise questions about their enforcement efforts.”
Adams and Reese Executive Committee Member and multi-national IP attorney Mitch Boult speaks to the strength of the Adams and Reese’s anti-counterfeiting, trademark, and intellectual property practice teams.
“Our teams utilize a number of IP enforcement strategies, including collaborative programs and partnerships with intermediaries. The most effective strategy in any given situation depends on the relevant circumstances and the willingness of the particular intermediary to cooperate.” Boult said. “Our attorneys remain at the forefront of anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy developments and have represented a wide array of rights-holders across all industries, including luxury, mobile devices and electronics, entertainment, apparel and accessories, consumer products, sports, pharmaceuticals, and software. They draw from their knowledge of the landscape, and collectively leverage a global network of contacts from major e-commerce sites, social media platforms, payment intermediaries, law enforcement agencies, and rights-holders to achieve desirable results.”
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