Counterfeiting is an enormous global problem. Experts estimate the true cost of these activities on brands is more than $2.8 trillion globally per year – approximately the annual output of an entire nation like the UK or France.
The distribution of industries affected by counterfeiting, though, is not what most people expect. While clothes and handbag designers do experience significant fraud, the main target is manufacturing. Southeast Asian factories, particularly Chinese, pump out millions of cheap, low-quality parts and pass them off as the real thing on international markets, making tremendous profits in the process. Such activities undercut the profits of legitimate companies and destroy their brands.
Fortunately, there is a solution: brand protection software. This makes it far harder for criminal enterprises to pass off fake products as genuine articles, protecting legitimate firms’ reputations and profit margins.
What Is Brand Protection And How Does It Work?
Brand protection software makes it easier for companies to protect their intellectual property. Solutions scan the internet looking for any evidence of fraudulent activity and then alert you automatically if they find a problem. They seek out any possible infringements relating to you:
- Colors and logos
- Patented products
- Trade names
- Design rights
- Brand
For instance, the software can help with:
- Trademark squatting
- Copyright piracy
- Patent theft
- Social media impersonation
Brand protection solutions, however, go beyond merely scanning the internet and looking for keywords that might indicate a breach of some kind. These are more all-encompassing, offering multiple points of defense.
Brand protection companies vary their services depending on your firm’s needs. Fees and the level of protection you get will depend on the size of your operation, your industry, and the direct threats you face from places like China.
Small, local firms, such as accountants, can rely on local legal structures to keep them safe. However, larger, multinational firms shipping parts all over the world need something more comprehensive.
So what do these brand protection companies do? Essentially, they add a human touch to the software, looking in more depth into intellectual property or fraud issues. Agents at these firms have significant experience in understanding the tactics used by criminal enterprises, and how to counter them. They know where they post adverts for products, who they attempt to partner with, and how they insert themselves into the supply chain illegitimately. Their role is to then warn partners and authentic stakeholders about the risks they face when working with certain suppliers.
The Four-Point Strategy
Brand protection solutions use a four-point strategy to protect their clients’ businesses. Following this process increases the likelihood of successful brand defense.
Searching For Infringements
The process starts by searching for copyright, IP, or brand infringement in the real world and online. Investigators look for evidence of impersonation.
Validation
The next step is to check whether any infringement actually occurred. Brands need to be careful not to disturb or disrupt firms that are operating lawfully. To do so could damage the company’s image and result in negative publicity.
Enforcement
The next step is to take steps to prevent intellectual property or trademark theft from occurring. In countries where there is rule of law, that means shutting down factories and prosecuting those responsible for perpetuating the fraud. For lawless countries, it means identifying rogue partners and preventing them from accessing global supply chains.
Reporting
The last step is to provide client firms with the information they can use to track their brand protection effects and protect themselves in the future. Often, a lack of understanding of criminal tactics is the biggest obstacle to brand theft elimination.
How To Protect Your Brand Effectively
For many global manufacturing firms, winning the battle against fraud seems impossible. While brand protection services can hunt down bad actors, they can’t systematically suppress them, particularly when they operate in jurisdictions dedicated to the theft of western intellectual property.
Fortunately, firms like Authena Technology are developing robust solutions to prevent fraud and brand impersonation at the source.To do so, they create a blockchain and near-field communication (NFC) system that makes it virtually impossible to commit fraud. A physical NFC device on each single product can detect tampering and allow customer authentication, while a blockchain storage system facilitates an immutable ledger, tracking the products’ movements as they make their way downstream to the end user.
Ultimately, once these technologies roll out, the problem of supply chain counterfeiting and brand impersonation will decrease significantly. Fraudsters’ only hope will be to target marginal industries or slow adopters.
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