Alibaba trademarked ‘Singles Day,’ but will let other sites use the term anyway

Although just a few years ago it didn’t really exist, the Singles Day holiday has become a massive part of the Chinese ecommerce market. And while every major ecommerce player wants to play, the words they use in their marketing can be a problem.

As I wrote yesterday in my feature on the history of Singles Day, the holiday was invented by university students as a kind of celebration of bachelorhood. In Chinese, it was called guanggunjie (bare sticks day): a reference to both being single and the appearance of the date 11/11. When ecommerce companies started offering sales on November 11th, at first many used this term, guanggunjie, in their marketing.

But presumably because they wanted the holiday to have broader appeal, somebody invented another term: shuangshiyi (double-eleven). And while who first said it is anybody’s guess, there’s no doubt that it was Alibaba that trademarked it. In fact, Alibaba has trademarked a number of terms including shuangshiyi (“double-eleven”), shuangshiyi kuanghuanjie (“double-eleven carnival”), and shuangshiyi wanggou kuanghuanjie (“double-eleven online shopping carnival”).

See: How Singles Day went from a niche bachelor holiday to the world’s biggest online shopping bonanza

Understandably, there has been some concern that Alibaba could use its ownership of the term “double-eleven” to try to take ownership of the holiday by suing other sites that use the term in their marketing. But China’s ecommerce sites can breathe a little easier now. According to Techweb, on Wednesday Alibaba CEO Jonathan Lu said:

‘Double-eleven’ has always been an open holiday, in which all participants work their hardest together.

It’s not exactly a written pledge not to sue companies that use Alibaba’s “double-eleven” trademark, but it’s probably close enough. The statement is being widely interpreted as an indication that Alibaba is not interested in going to war with other ecommerce firms over the term.

Even so, other major shopping sites seem to be embracing their own marketing phrases this year. JD is simply calling the holiday “11.11,” for example, and Amazon China’s marketing phrase of choice is “11.11 zhexue” (a clever play on the word “philosophy” and the word “discount” in Chinese).

(Source: Techweb)