Jan. 17 (NBD) -- Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group said Tuesday that the company will soon launch a month-long campaign under which it will sue merchants that are selling counterfeit goods on its marketplace. 

The e-commerce conglomerate will first claim compensation from 100 sellers of sham products.  

Great headway in battling with counterfeits

The date January 16, 2018 marks the first anniversary of the establishment of the Alibaba Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance. 

On the day, the Alibaba Intellectual Property Protection Rights Owners Day was held in southern China's Guangzhou city. 

The e-commerce titan unveiled its remarkable achievements in cracking down on counterfeit products in 2017, and announced the plan to team up with brand owners to claim compensation from both producers and sellers of fake goods. 

According to Alibaba's newly released 2017 annual report on intellectual property protection, 240,000 stores on the titan's online marketplace Taobao were shut down over the infringement of intellectual property rights last year. Only 1.49 out of every 10,000 transactions involved suspected sale of fake items, and the refund arisen from the suspicion of counterfeit dropped 29 percent compared to the previous year. 

For the whole year of 2017, Alibaba also reported 1,910 clues concerning counterfeits to law enforcement agencies across China. 

Yao Yunren, senior vice president for brand cooperation at Alibaba, pointed out at the event that the company has made great progress in the fight against shoddy products and achieved a remarkable breakthrough in intellectual property rights protection last year. 

This year, the e-commerce giant will strengthen cooperation with more brand owners to combat the sale of bogus goods, Yao noted. 

Fake items flow to other platforms like WeChat

Despite the advancement in battling against counterfeiting goods, it still has a long way to go to root out fakes, Li Xihan, operation director of intellectual property protection at Alibaba, said at the event Tuesday. 

The annual report shows that Alibaba closed 180,000 stores on its platform in 2016 and the figure rose to 240,000 last year. Analysis of data showed that quite a number of stores selling fake items continued to sell counterfeits even after being shut down. 

Related cases handled by law enforcement agencies at different regions also demonstrate that sources of fake goods remain active. Not only so, the division of labor is more well-organized to evade crackdown. 

Taking for example Putian, a city in eastern China's Fujian province, the production and sale of counterfeit sneakers is rampant there. 

In a field investigation in late 2017, Alibaba's anti-counterfeiting team found that tons of fake Nike, Adidas, and PUMA sneakers were being transported to customers all over the country at around 10pm every night. 

In addition to subdividing the labor, some manufacturers and sellers of counterfeits are migrating to platforms like the renowned social media app WeChat and group-buying site Pinduoduo amid Taobao's enhanced crackdown on fake goods, Li pointed out. 

With regard to this, Alibaba urges more brand owners to join its efforts to fight against counterfeits. 

A source with Alibaba also told NBD that the continuous influx of fake goods reflect China is in dire need to improve the related laws and regulations or judicial practices and standards to better crack down on counterfeits.