Brand protection is a complex of administrative, legal, and technical measures aimed at preventing violations of intellectual property rights or eliminating existing violations. Simply saying these are actions that prevent the appearance of counterfeit or are aimed at eliminating their number. There are two main ways of protection – administrative (protection of a trademark) and digital (protection of a brand in the net).
Administrative way of brand protection
Simple thoughts and ideas don’t work; intellectual property defines and protects humans’ innovations and creations.
There’s such a notion as a trade mark. A trade mark designates not only a legally protected name but also the product itself, its image. A commercially successful trade mark that attracts a significant number of loyal customers becomes a brand. Its level of success may be defined considering market type, product category, and a target segment where it’s represented. A trade mark is a subject of intellectual property and official registration of a trade mark helps to protect the name of the brand from its use by rivals.
Trade mark protection gives a legal guarantee that the brand’s name has the only owner and the rights for this TM cannot be transferred to the third party, which is critically important especially when the brand is already well-known and successful. According to data from the European Union Intellectual Property Network (EUIPN) one can register a trade mark which has words, sounds, image, or tridimensional representations.
Digital way of brand protection
Forgeries on the Internet already make up almost half of all counterfeits by volume. Brands lose colossal money due to counterfeit and pirate content on the Internet. That’s if not to take into account tainted brand experience, lowered customers’ loyalty and company effectiveness. And even though the digital strategy is now practically a core component of business development, many brands still pay more attention to the physical world, and not the need to protect the brand online.
It’s easy to make yourself out to be a popular brand on the Internet. Websites are created, authentic e-mails are copied with incredible preciseness from the legal analogs. Pirated films, games, music, clothes, and food – it’s hard to find the branch not affected by frauds. These guys can easily capture your brand, attract clients, and steal your profit using domain names similar to brands names, your content, and images.
In 2017 brands lost 320 billion dollars due to pirate usage of their domain names. The name of a brand may be used as a part of a domain name, and similar names to the registered trade marks may be used to mislead potential customers. Thus, the main way of digital protection of a brand is constant monitoring of domain names of different websites and their purchase to minimize the opportunity to use these domains by brandjackers.
Team work Actions to fight online-frauds and result achievement require significant efforts and team work. Many companies create cross-functional teams for developing complex actions to protect brands. These teams monitor online and physical channels where the brand rights might be violated. Online channels include social networks, trading platforms for business and consumers, e-commerce websites and auctions, paid search, and e-mail. Physical channels may include any usual retail points or market places. If any violations are notices these cross-teams are authorized to apply any correspondent actions following company’s policy, the severity of the threat, or the level of risk, all within the legal framework.
Brand is a way to show yourself to future consumers, the basis of company’s success, and its high reputation. Currently, brand protection plays an important role in business growth. You are always one step forward if you have proper security.
