Innovative means ＂AI＂ tracks China’s counterfeiting in the Internet era
A judge of Beijing Internet Court is giving a mock trial demonstration of Internet Court. Xinhua News Agency reporter Yan Huanzong photo
Members of the network inspection women’s squadron of Guang ‘an District Administration for Industry and Commerce in Guang ‘an City, Sichuan Province are conducting random inspection of cross-border e-commerce online products under the jurisdiction of Chengbei Refrigerant Institute. Photo by Liao Xiaobing (People’s Vision)
In our life, counterfeiting is a topic that is often discussed. In the era of mobile Internet, how should we fight against counterfeiting? The answer, of course, is "using high technology".
From "intellectual property protection technology brain" to "Internet court", from the technical cooperation between the government and enterprises in counterfeiting to the cross-border "solving crimes" of China’s anti-counterfeiting technology platform, China’s anti-counterfeiting means are not only more and more intelligent, but also more and more effective. Thanks to the technical support and the joint efforts of Chinese people, China has achieved a historic leap in intellectual property, and China has become a veritable intellectual property power.
Technology Guarantee "Technology Brain"+"Internet Court"
On August 9th, the first China Artificial Intelligence Summit, jointly directed by the Central Network Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security, and hosted by the Xiamen Municipal Government, was opened, and the results of 995 projects from 362 teams across the country were announced at the same time. At the meeting, China company Alibaba Group’s "Intellectual Property Protection Technology Brain" won the honorary title of "Artificial Intelligence Innovation Star".
Ni Guangnan, judge of the contest and academician of China Academy of Engineering, pointed out that China has done better than foreign countries in many technological innovations. Ali’s "intellectual property protection technology brain" is a good application and plays an important leading role in the industry. The state’s support for the innovative application of AI anti-counterfeiting technology will promote the industry.
"Intellectual Property Protection Technology Brain" is an algorithmic technology system that Alibaba Group has accumulated online and offline anti-counterfeiting feature library and anti-counterfeiting experience in the past 20 years. It can find a ball with fine black spots among tens of thousands of balls in less than milliseconds.
Xue Hui, a senior algorithmic expert in Ali Security, told this reporter: "The total sample data of this system is equivalent to the collection of 186 national libraries in China, and the accumulated sample size of counterfeit pictures alone exceeds 13.7 billion." Evolving algorithms make this system work efficiently: if it takes 10 seconds to view a picture manually, then 50,000 people can work at the same time to barely catch up with the operation speed of "intellectual property protection technology brain". This system operates 24 hours a day, and 96% of suspected infringing links can be locked and processed at the moment of release.
"AI anti-counterfeiting uses more technologies such as machine learning and big data analysis, which is of great significance to the identification of true and false. AI anti-counterfeiting is a professional application scenario of data technology and artificial intelligence, and Ali has made great achievements in this respect. " Xu Zongben, academician of China Academy of Sciences and director of the National Engineering Laboratory of Big Data Algorithm and Analysis Technology, told this reporter.
At present, this AI anti-counterfeiting technology independently developed by China is being popularized and applied in the whole society. In the past three years, "Intellectual Property Protection Technology Brain" assisted the police in 31 provinces and 227 districts and counties to arrest 4,439 suspects and smash 4,289 fake dens. Take Shanghai as an example. This year, with the help of this technology, Shanghai police have cracked the first global counterfeiting case involving more than 40 million yuan in Britain, the largest fake case involving 300 million yuan in China, and the largest transnational fake LV case involving 1.8 billion yuan in the world.
As e-commerce activities become more and more active, courts are also exploring new cyberspace governance and specialized dispute resolution models.
On August 18th, 2017, Hangzhou Internet Court, the world’s first Internet court, was unveiled, which is a major institutional innovation for the judiciary to actively adapt to the development of the Internet. Following the principle of "online trial of online cases", online shopping consumer rights disputes have become one of the main types of disputes tried by Internet courts. On September 9, 2018, Beijing Internet Court was officially listed; On September 28th, Guangzhou Internet Court was established.
Since then, many online shopping disputes have been transferred to Internet courts. According to the data released by Beijing Internet Court, from September 9, 2018 to October 31 this year, the court accepted 4,838 cases of online shopping disputes, ranking second among the cases accepted by the court.
Cooperation between government and enterprises "using new technology in law enforcement and supervision"
Strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights and cracking down on illegal activities such as manufacturing and selling fake and shoddy goods according to law will play a very important role in developing healthy and benign intellectual property rights and building China’s social credit system. This is also one of the efforts of the China Municipal Government.
During the two sessions of the National People’s Congress this year, more than 10 deputies to the National People’s Congress and members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference made suggestions on strengthening anti-counterfeiting and intellectual property protection. They believed that while increasing the deterrent effect of the law on counterfeiters, it is necessary for law enforcement agencies, brand owners, platforms, consumers and other societies to work together to promote the new anti-counterfeiting technologies and new models of social co-governance that have been explored.
In April this year, the State Administration of Market Supervision, together with the Ministry of Public Security and other five ministries and commissions, issued a document requesting the whole country to strengthen the application of new technologies such as big data, cloud computing and mobile Internet in law enforcement supervision. In May, when the General Administration deployed key tasks, it pointed out that it was necessary to innovate supervision methods, speed up the application of new technologies and means, and improve the ability of clue discovery, traceability and precision strike.
In the Internet age, in the process of cracking down on the manufacturing and selling of fake products, law enforcement agencies need brand owners to issue appraisal reports, brand owners need the assistance of law enforcement resources of law enforcement agencies, and both sides need the technical support of the Internet platform, so they can’t fight fake products efficiently by themselves.
"From the past practice, the mechanism of cooperation between government and enterprises in counterfeiting has achieved good results." The relevant person in charge of the State Administration of Market Supervision said that in 2018, 13 provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Delta and Pan-Pearl River Delta jointly launched the cross-regional e-commerce anti-counterfeiting "Yun Jian Alliance" campaign, in which some e-commerce platforms played an important role.
It is worth noting that the new internet anti-counterfeiting technology plays an important role in anti-counterfeiting. Fake identification model, semantic recognition algorithm, real-time interception system and other anti-counterfeiting technologies applied in a series of anti-counterfeiting cases show that China’s e-commerce platform can help law enforcement agencies improve law enforcement efficiency through technical assistance.
While intensifying the crackdown on intellectual property infringement, a counterfeit goods management system is also taking shape. FOREO, a Swedish cleaner manufacturer, recently publicly expressed its gratitude and willingness to continue to cooperate with China police and enterprises to help them destroy the production chain of fake cleaners.
In July, 2018, China police, together with FOREO and Ali Anti-Counterfeiting Special Team, successfully destroyed a fake FOREO cleaner production chain, seized thousands of fakes and product molds, and then smashed the fake dens in Fujian, arresting many suspects. After the case was detected, FOREO sent staff to China to send banners to relevant parties, and joined the AACA in March of the following year. AACA is a typical representative of multi-party anti-counterfeiting co-governance in China. It integrates the scattered law enforcement resources in the past, the clues received for manufacturing and selling fakes and anti-counterfeiting technology to form a "law enforcement agency+brand+Ali" anti-counterfeiting co-governance system to jointly protect intellectual property rights and jointly protect innovation and defend genuine products.
By the end of 2018, AACA members had grown rapidly from 30 brands when it was founded to 121. These brands come from 16 countries and regions around the world, among which 33% are European brands, 27% are American brands and 24% are China. The business of alliance members covers 12 industries, including clothing and footwear, household and electronic products, personal care, food and beverage, science and technology, computers and smart devices, and luxury goods.
Zhu Xinli, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, believes that AACA is actually a new era anti-counterfeiting co-governance system that mobilizes all sectors of society to participate extensively. It closely connects law enforcement agencies, global brand owners, platforms and consumers, forming a new online and offline anti-counterfeiting mode of joint efforts against manufacturing and selling fake gangs, which provides a new idea for solving the problem of fake goods.
The data shows that the social satisfaction of intellectual property protection in China has increased from 63.69 points in 2012 to 76.88 points in 2018, with a cumulative increase of 13 points, and the whole has entered a good stage. In the 2019 Global Innovation Index Report released by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China ranked 14th, up 21 places from 2013, ranking first among middle-income economies.
In this regard, Shen Changyu, director of China National Intellectual Property Administration, believes that under the leadership of the Party, China’s intellectual property undertakings have achieved a historic leap from scratch and from small to large step by step, becoming a veritable intellectual property power.
Cross-border case solving "China leads the world in anti-counterfeiting technology"
Controlling counterfeiting has always been a worldwide problem. The globalization of counterfeit goods is reflected in the transnational differentiation of manufacturing and selling fake chains. Therefore, international cooperation is crucial to solve the problem of counterfeit goods flooding.
A few days ago, China police and UAE police cracked a major transnational counterfeiting case. The police of the two countries simultaneously closed the net, arrested 57 suspects at home and abroad, and seized more than 28,000 counterfeit luxury goods such as Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Chanel, involving nearly 1.8 billion yuan. The world’s largest transnational fake LV case was solved in 2019, which made international brands and UAE police highly praise China’s attitude and ability in intellectual property protection and counterfeiting.
This year, not only the United Arab Emirates, but also international organizations such as the World Intellectual Property Organization, Europol, Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology and foreign government departments spoke highly of China’s anti-counterfeiting technology. International public opinion believes that China’s artificial intelligence technology and AI anti-counterfeiting have brought important technological innovation to the global counterfeit goods control.
In September, at the annual meeting of intellectual property rights in China attended by dozens of countries around the world, Assistant Director-General Takagi Yoshiyuki praised China for its leading role in using science and technology to protect intellectual property rights.
Coincidentally, Vietnamese Vice Minister of Science and Technology Fan Gong also said yesterday: "The intellectual property protection system established in China is very remarkable. China leads the world in the application rate of artificial intelligence in intellectual property protection. I hope that all countries can attach importance to the role of science and technology in solving the global problem of counterfeit goods like China. "
During the Second China International Import Expo, the New Progress Report on Intellectual Property Protection and Business Environment in China released by the Office of the National Leading Group for Combating Infringement of Intellectual Property Rights and Manufacturing and Selling Fake and Inferior Commodities showed that in 2018, China National Intellectual Property Administration investigated and dealt with 77,000 cases of patent infringement and counterfeiting, up 15.9% year-on-year. Investigated and dealt with 31,000 trademark violation cases, with a case value of 550 million yuan. Among them, China has continuously strengthened trademark protection of foreign-invested enterprises, and investigated and dealt with more than 6,000 cases of infringement on the rights and interests of registrants in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and foreign trademark, with a case value of 151 million yuan, up 50.1% year-on-year.
Getahun, another assistant director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, publicly praised this: "The China government attaches great importance to protecting intellectual property rights, cracking down on infringement and counterfeiting, actively strengthening overall coordination, and carrying out cross-departmental, cross-regional and cross-border joint law enforcement. These good experiences and practices have set an example for the international community."