Matthew Bassiur received the Global Leadership in IP award at the Luxury Law Awards, part of Luxury Law Summit London, which took place on 9 June. He is vice president and head of global IP enforcement at Alibaba. He began his career as an assistant district attorney at the New York County District Attorney’s Office and later served as a prosecutor in the computer crime and IP section of the US Department of Justice. He held senior roles at Apple and Pfizer before joining Alibaba in 2016. He spoke with the Global Legal Post about his career, issues of online enforcement and hidden sales, the importance of anti-counterfeiting protections and his early desire to be an astronaut. What was your path to becoming head of global IP enforcement at Alibaba? My path to Alibaba has been shaped by seeing IP enforcement from every angle. I began as an assistant district attorney in the Trial Division of the New York County District Attorney’s Office under Robert Morgenthau, where I specialised in prosecuting trademark counterfeiting and Asian organised crime. That gave me a ground-level understanding of how counterfeit networks operate and how law enforcement can dismantle them. From there I 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 experience taught me how to build cross-border cases and how to best partner with foreign governments. I then moved to the private sector. At Apple, as senior director, Americas region and counsel for IPR Enforcement, I built and oversaw investigations into theft, fraud, cybercrime and counterfeiting; and at Pfizer, as vice president and deputy chief security officer, I oversaw anti-counterfeiting operations, criminal investigations, physical security and crisis management for