In simple terms, Brand protection is the act of protecting the digital property of companies and their brands against copyright pirates, counterfeit brands, and infringers of other types of IP, such as patents, design rights, color mark and trade dress.
This is done to ensure that company image, reputation and value are kept intact & also to defend the loss of revenue from a company. In simple terms, brand protection prevents brand abuse.
What is Brand Abuse
Brand abuse is a general term that can be defined as various malicious activities that all share the common theme of exploiting an established brand in some way. Some examples of brand abuse include but not limited to:
- Social media impersonation.
- Trademark squatting.
- Patent theft.
- Copyright piracy.
- Rogue websites.
- Counterfeiting.
If Companies don’t watch against any type of brand abuse chances are that they may become a target.
What Do Brand Protection Services Do?
Detection
Finding and addressing potential threats can help you find issues online, wherever they could be. This can include counterfeit listings on ecommerce, a rogue website or an impersonating social media profile, along with other forms of falsifying company identities and other issues.
Validation
Ensuring that the issues made known are truly infringements is a very important step. Validation is the process of making sure each issue is valid in order to validate that other authentic companies are not penalized by accident while trying to enforce IP rights.
Enforcement
Brand protection enforcement is the step of taking action and after ensuring brand protection is needed, removing IP infringements online. This includes removing a product listed on an online marketplace, closing the imitation account from social media, or even taking down a rogue website.
Reporting
The last stage of a brand protection service. Reporting or presenting information to brands that is useful and actionable takes place in order to stay vigilant of the status of intellectual property online, and then to improve the process of brand protection in the future.
Conclusion
The problems caused by counterfeiters targeting a brand are more serious and deeper than many companies realize. Knowing how to keep intellectual property safe from damage is key for many brands. Counterfeits are constantly targeting companies they think they can profit from, and will use any and every tactic at their disposal to stay in business.
