The European Parliament tackling online piracy of live sporting events, and Alibaba updating its AI platform

Good morning everyone. For this week’s IP news:

The European Parliament wants illegal sports events broadcast to be eliminated within 30 minutes

The European Parliament recently presented a series of measures to fight against the illegal broadcast of sports events online (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210517IPR04117/tack…). As such, the Parliament wants the European Commission to improve the actual legislative framework to enhance the protection of sports broadcast. In particular, the Parliament wants the Commission to recognise some rights to sports competition organisers, for whom broadcasting agreements with television channels are a considerable source of income. 

The Parliament also wants the rules to be adapted so as to reflect the fact that sports events only have a “short term” value, hence the need to ensure that illegal broadcast is immediately suspended, or suspended in a maximum of 30 minutes from the reception of the complaint. Of course, suspension measures should never be arbitrary or excessive, always striking to comply with the principle of proportionality. 

The Parliament also considers that legal options to watch sports events should benefit from a better promotion in the EU, in order to make sure that consumers are aware of all the options available.

Alibaba's AI platform recognises counterfeit luxury products sold online 

As Chinese consumers become the main engine for the global luxury industry, Chinese e-commerce giants and researchers in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry are also strengthening their systems to tackle counterfeit products.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba recently updated its AI platform. The platform is now able to identify authentic and counterfeit logos of luxury brands in 30-50 milliseconds. This platform contains a database of more than 1 million logos covering 500 luxury products categories. Once any counterfeit product is discovered, the platform will block the product's link immediately. 

As we can see, AI platforms will become increasingly helpful in the fight against counterfeiting, especially for online platforms such as Alibaba or Amazon, where the volume of products offered makes it difficult for a human to go through. AI will assist by identifying potential counterfeits, which can then be reviewed manually by a human controller if needed.