When Professor Ryann Aoukar developed an idea for an innovative new strainer bowl, his invention caught the eye of admirers and investors alike.
Unfortunately, his idea was also the subject of a very different kind of attention: fraud.
Late last year, Aoukar, a designer and associate professor in the College of Architecture and Design, saw his innovative cooking strainer become the victim of a blatant rip-off at the hands of vendors operating through Taobao, a Chinese crowdfunding site owned by the multi-billion dollar e-commerce company Alibaba. Ryann’s brainchild, the Anton strainer bowl, utilizes a built-in handle to drain water used to wash the food in a more efficient and water conserving manner.
Without Aoukar’s permission, a vendor operating through the site had successfully taken information from Aoukar’s kickstarter site for the product and translated it for a Chinese audience.
“He didn’t even steal the product itself, he stole my personality,” Aoukar said of the “hacker,” who took the text, videos and pictures from Aoukar’s crowdfunding site and subsequently posted them to Taobao.
To those viewing the Chinese site, it appeared as if an Italian designer “Jacob” Aoukar was appealing for funds to finance his new invention, when in reality Aoukar, who is actually a Lebanese-born Canadian, had zero involvement with the copycat effort.
What followed was a seemingly fruitless legal effort in which Aoukar, with the help of his lawyer, desperately tried to convince Alibaba to take down the fraudulent site. Attempts to convince Alibaba representatives of Aoukar’s identity as the creator of the strainer yielded few results, as weeks went by with little progress and the Chinese crowdfunder site still operating.
For all his misfortune, Aoukar is by no means the only victim of fraudulent practices perpetrated through Alibaba. Chinese government officials released a less than flattering report on the e-commerce firm earlier last week, stating that it was “far too lax” in its regulation of counterfeit goods sold and funded through the site. It has been speculated that the report wasn’t released earlier for fear of damaging the emerging company’s financial future. The company broke all previous Wall Street records with its massive September initial public offering valued at $25 billion.
In a statement made to The Daily Beacon, an international representative from the Alibaba Group claimed that the company was currently cooperating with Chinese state regulators in an “agreement to tackle fakes and boost consumer protection online.” Taobao has a “zero tolerance policy towards counterfeits” on any of its online platforms.
For all Aoukar’s legal efforts and attempts to solve the problem through Alibaba, it wasn’t until a Canadian journalist publicized the story that true progress was made.
Nathan Vanderklippe, writing for the Toronto-based paper The Globe and Mail, spoke with Alibaba employees, Aoukar and briefly with the “hacker” responsible for stealing Aoukar’s kickstarter platform.
After the article’s publication, the Taobao protection team took down the fraudulent crowdfunder from its platform.
“They started listening to me because of the journalist,” Aoukar said of those working with Alibaba. “They stopped it, they drove me crazy before they did, they didn’t do it easily, but it happened.”
Aoukar said he is now in negotiations with several retailers in the hopes of making his product available to a mass audience.
