Two rival Chinese travel services are embroiled in an online spat after a visa application app accused Alibaba of poaching its ideas — the fourth time this year the e-commerce giant has been slammed for allegedly stealing intellectual property.

At the end of last month, Alibaba, the world’s largest online retailer, launched a new visa application feature on its travel booking platform, Fliggy. But on Monday — just four days after the service went public — the CEO of China’s first online one-stop visa provider, Panda Visa, launched into a tirade, accusing Fliggy of creating a near-identical app, right down to the interface and design.

“Everything is exactly the same!” Panda Visa boss Han Zhisu wrote in a post on Zhihu, China’s Quora-like question-and-answer platform. Among the similarities she pointed out were the photo ID verification process, a progress tracking feature, courier pick-up systems, and “optical character recognition” (OCR) — a type of technology that helps capture detailed images of documents. Han claimed that two weeks before Fliggy’s launch, its employees had posed as potential investors and asked for a copy of Panda Visa’s core technology and supply chain materials.

Both platforms are intermediary services, helping users submit applications without having to personally go to embassies or consulates in person. Currently, Panda Visa users can apply for visas to 68 different countries — including the U.S., the U.K., and Japan — right from their smartphones.

Fliggy did not respond to Sixth Tone’s requests for comment. But in a notice circulated on Alibaba’s intranet on Tuesday and seen by Sixth Tone, Fliggy’s CEO, Li Shaohua, dismissed the allegations as “truly and extremely detestable.”

Li said his employees never initiated contact with Panda Visa; rather, they had begun working on Fliggy last year and made patent applications for the company’s OCR information form, online photo ID verification, progress tracking system, and courier pick-up system in August this year. Panda Visa, meanwhile, launched in June 2016.

Han’s post marks the fourth time this year an Alibaba-backed platform has been accused of stealing another company’s ideas. In August, Alipay — an Alibaba-backed mobile payment platform — was caught copying source code from its Tencent-owned rival, WeChat. In September, a startup accused Alibaba’s medical arm, Ali Health, of stealing its technology to evaluate which products were suitable for a customer’s skin. And last month, a startup that helps parents monitor their babies’ health accused Ali Health of stealing its interface design.

Panda Visa has already hired lawyers and is planning to take legal action, Zhang Yan, a spokeswoman for the company, told Sixth Tone.

Zhang admitted that Panda Visa’s odds of winning in court were probably not high, due to the general lack of legal protections for intellectual property in China. Panda Visa’s situation is further complicated by the fact that Fliggy most likely produced their similar-looking product using different code — “But this does not mean they didn’t steal our concepts and designs,” Zhang added.

Panda Visa was so annoyed by Fliggy’s arrogance, Zhang said, that it vowed to continue battling the company until their grievances were addressed. “I quote Li’s remark [that the allegations are detestable] and say the same thing back to Fliggy,” Zhang said.

Dai Bin, an attorney specializing in antitrust law at Leijie Zhanda Law Firm in Beijing, told Sixth Tone that he thought Panda Visa might have a case — especially if Fliggy had broken computer software copyright law — though that the case might still be difficult to win.

“Proving there’s actual infringement is hard unless Panda Visa can provide concrete evidence, like Fliggy using Panda Visa’s code,” Dai said, adding that current Chinese laws don’t consider similar-looking interfaces a form of plagiarism.

Editor: Julia Hollingsworth.

(Header image: Li Shaohua, president of travel booking service Fliggy, demonstrates how to apply for a visa online at a conference, Oct. 28, 2017. VCG)