Matthew Bassiur, vice president and head of global IP enforcement at Alibaba, received the Global Leadership in IP award at the Luxury Law Awards, part of Luxury Law Summit London. His career spans roles at the New York County District Attorney’s Office, US Department of Justice, Apple, and Pfizer before joining Alibaba in 2016.
Path to Alibaba
Bassiur’s journey to heading global IP enforcement at Alibaba was shaped by diverse experiences. He started as an assistant district attorney in the Trial Division of the New York County District Attorney’s Office under Robert Morgenthau, specializing in trademark counterfeiting and Asian organized crime. That ground-level experience gave him a clear understanding of how counterfeit networks operate and how law enforcement dismantles them. Later, he became a federal prosecutor in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the US Department of Justice, prosecuting large-scale, multi-jurisdictional IP crimes and coordinating domestic and international enforcement training and outreach. That role taught him how to build cross-border cases and partner effectively with foreign governments.
His private sector roles further expanded his perspective. At Apple, as senior director for the Americas region and counsel for IPR Enforcement, he built and oversaw investigations into theft, fraud, cybercrime and counterfeiting. At Pfizer, as vice president and deputy chief security officer, he oversaw anti-counterfeiting operations, criminal investigations, physical security and crisis management across North, Central and South America. Each position provided a different lens—government and private sector, rights holder and platform. When Alibaba asked him to lead global IP enforcement, that combination of insight proved essential. Alibaba hosts billions of daily active listings across vastly different markets, requiring not only enforcement expertise and brand-protection knowledge but also practical understanding of global commerce, technology and public-private collaboration.
Pressing IP Enforcement Issues
Bassiur highlights two key challenges in IP enforcement today: the promise and limits of artificial intelligence, and the rise of hidden sales.
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AI has transformed counterfeit detection at scale, but it’s not a silver bullet. It excels at pattern-based infringements but lacks contextual brand knowledge and human judgment. Additionally, scaling advanced models remains cost-prohibitive. At Alibaba, large language models, optical character recognition, image recognition and multimodal deep learning screen listings as sellers create or modify them, removing suspected infringements before sales occur.
Hidden sales, where counterfeiters promote goods on social media, standalone websites and chat applications before directing buyers to seemingly innocuous platform listings, evade proactive monitoring. Alibaba is fighting back through criminal enforcement, online monitoring, and stakeholder engagement. The company supported what is believed to be the only criminal investigation and prosecution of hidden sales to date, leading to an August 2024 raid that arrested 10 suspects and seized over 50,000 infringing items targeting more than 15 brands. Alibaba also chairs the hidden-sales committee of the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition’s Marketplace Advisory Council.
Bassiur believes effective IP enforcement requires technology, collaboration, and keeping the human purpose in mind. He advises young lawyers to build a broad toolkit, understand business IP usage, develop technology literacy, support relationships, and maintain a customer-centric focus. His own path reflects this advice—he was awarded a Fulbright Specialist position in 2008 and taught IP law at Renmin University in Beijing, experiences that continue to influence his approach to the work.
If he weren’t a lawyer, Bassiur might have been a professor or criminal investigator—and in a sense, he has been fortunate enough to do both. His current role blends these paths, training teams and partners worldwide to disrupt criminal networks. He once joked he might trade both of those pursuits to be an astronaut.