Alibaba wins unfair competition action against click farm company in China

On 6 June 2019, the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled in favour of Alibaba in an unfair competition action against Hangzhou Meiming Technology, operator of the 'meilipa' platform. Behind a facade of free product testing for consumers, meilipa organised click farming: it steered its users towards targeted purchases on Taobao and Tmall so that dishonest sellers could artificially inflate their transaction volumes and credibility ratings, the payments transiting through the defendant. The court held that this artificial boosting of untrustworthy merchants' reputation distorted competition — in the first action brought by an e-commerce company under China's revised unfair competition law — and awarded Taobao 2 million RMB (about EUR 252,000). Beyond the amount, the decision matters for brand owners: the reliability of ratings and reviews is a pillar of marketplace trust, and platforms now have judicial backing to pursue those who corrupt it.

Economic parasitism: the application for a trademark to attract competitors' consumers on Amazon

Jeco Distribution had been selling licence-plate accessories under the sign JECO since 2013, with a trademark registered in class 9 and a strong presence on Amazon. A competitor — Univers Graphique and its manager — filed the sign JECO as a trademark in 2017 for products it had never marketed under that name, then had Jeco's Amazon listings taken down. The Lille Judicial Court (28 February 2020) drew the consequences of the fraud: under Article L.712-6 of the Intellectual Property Code and the maxim fraus omnia corrumpit, a registration is fraudulent when the trademark is diverted from its function of indicating origin with the intention of harming a third party — here, of confiscating a sign necessary to the competitor's activity. The court ordered the transfer of the trademark and awarded EUR 9,000 in damages for parasitism: filing a competitor's sign to capture the visibility it created on Amazon means profiting from its investments without spending a cent.

11 May 2020
Initially published on iptwins.com

DNS Abuse: How Can Domain Names Linked to the Same Actor Be Connected?

On 18 August 2026, ICANN published for public comment the Initial Report of its DNS Abuse Mitigation Policy Development Process (PDP 1). Among its proposals are Associated Domain Checks: when a registrar acts on an abuse report, it should also examine the other domain names held by the same customer. In its comments of 25 September 2026, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center supports the approach but points out its main limitation: the checks stop at the edge of a single registrar's portfolio. Bad actors know this and spread their registrations across several registrars, which hampers consolidated UDRP proceedings. WIPO suggests exploring cross-registrar mechanisms without saying which data could link the names. The article argues that payment data, pseudonymised, could serve as that common denominator, while acknowledging its limits (prepaid cards, fraud, multiple payment methods): an indicator rather than proof. It marks a shift from a one-domain, one-investigation logic to a network approach.

28 September 2026
Initially published on iptwins.com

DNS and Web3: How Can We Avoid Importing Cryptosquatting into the DNS?

The DNS and blockchain-based alternative naming systems are converging, with projects such as .BLOCKCHAIN and the .ROBOT cryptoTLD seeking to operate the same string in both worlds. In August 2026, ICANN's Technical Study Group released an Initial Report on integrating gTLDs with alternative naming systems, built on a "string + controller" principle: the same name must remain under the same control across systems, with its status kept in sync. In September 2026, the SSAC supported this synchronisation but noted that applying the UDRP and the URS becomes difficult when a registrant exists only in an alternative system, without conventional registration data. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center warns that cybersquatting is already widespread in these systems: mapping names automatically into the DNS would import existing infringements. Trademark owners therefore need functionally equivalent protection mechanisms, including a way to prevent infringing names from being activated, as initiatives like Unstoppable Domains joining GlobalBlock have begun to show.

24 September 2026
Initially published on iptwins.com

Article Information

Author

Emmanuel Gillet

Publication Date

22 September 2019

Jurisdiction

Related Decision(s)

Hangzhou Intermediate People's CourtAlibaba (Taobao) v. Hangzhou Meiming Technology Co., Ltd ('meilipa')2019-06-06
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