Alibaba wins preliminary TM injunction against Alibabacoin

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited has won a preliminary injunction against cryptocurrency firm Alibabacoin Foundation.

The legal victory centers on the use of the company’s name, or likeness, purportedly to promote the foundation’s similarly named virtual currency, according to Oct. 22 court documents in the U.S.’s Southern District of New York.

The case follows an attempt in April, which was denied on the grounds that “Alibaba has not met its burden to establish a reasonable probability that the Court has personal jurisdiction over Alibabacoin,” which is listed as being based in both Dubai and Belarus.

In the Oct. 22 filing, Alibaba said “with the benefit of evidence obtained through discovery” they believe that the cryptocurrency firm has published further promotional material that uses its trademarks to align itself with the Chinese conglomerate, which helped in its attempt to raise $3.5 million in an initial coin offering (ICO), a crowdfunding tool for crypto-related ventures.

In his decision, Judge Paul Oetken said renewed application for a preliminary injection is granted, adding it “enjoins defendants from using the ALIBABA Marks, as Alibaba has defined that term in its application for a preliminary injunction, alone or in combination with any words, terms, designations, marks, or designs—as well as any mark, image, or depiction that is confusingly similar to or likely to impair the distinctiveness of the ALIBABA Marks—anywhere in the United States.”

The lawsuit lists a number of defendants that include Alibabacoin Foundation aka ABBC Foundation; ABBC Block Chain IT Solutions LLC; Alibabacoin General Trading FZE; Alibabacoin Foundation LLC and Jason Daniel Paul Philip and Hasan Abbas, the founders of the company.

According to the company’s LinkedIn page, Alibabacoin Foundation’s blockchain technology “will use artificial-intelligence techniques effective for image recognition most reliably to identify a person most accurately as possible and use this technique effectively for the structure of payment of electronic wallets and financial transactions.”

The cryptocurrency, AlibabaCoin or ABBC has a market value of $1.9 million and is trading at 71 cents, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The coin had reached an all-time high of $1.63 on Oct. 18, 2018. Meanwhile, Alibaba boasts a market value of more than $330 billion.

Attorneys representing both Alibaba and AlibabaCoin Foundation didn’t immediately return requests for comment.