Online Trademark Infringement is the unlawful use of work protected by a registered trademark online. It is simple to copy brand names and logos, or even to register a domain name containing unauthorized use of trademarks for counterfeit or grey market scams.
Major Online Trademark Infringement Risks
Revenue loss
Reputation loss
Legal liability
Data leakage
Grey market flood
Distributor relation crisis
BrandShield Trademark Infringement Protection Benefits
Increased Revenues
Investing in trademark infringement protection stops your company from losing revenues and reputation.
Logo Recognition
Cutting-edge technology developed by BrandShield detects logos within graphic items.
Increased Reputation
Trademark infringement protection prevents your customers from associating your brand with low-quality products, losing interest, and turning to competitors.
Complete Risk Map
Gain full control of all risks that cause harm to your company and customers.
Detect Scam Clusters
BrandShield’s unique Patterns feature and Matrix section find clusters of infringes or infringers anywhere in the digital sphere.
Multi-Layered Solution
8 Layers of protection for robust and reliable detections and takedowns, including websites, marketplaces social media, and a remediation phase.
BrandShield’s Trademark Infringement Protection
Trademark infringement is a huge concern for most brands. Scammers have developed several methods to scam brands and customers using trademark infringement.
Domain name infringement
Happens when a person or business uses a domain that is already protected by a trademark.
In some cases, the original name is slightly changed, this is a case of typosquatting. When Unicode characters and non-Latin characters are found in the domain name, it is known as an IDN scam.
Copyright infringement
Another common form of infringement occurs when scammers target the content of a brand website, or propietry videos and audio files, without the knowledge or permission of the original copyright holder.
While recreating social pages and mobile apps, they will use the trademarked assets of the brand like a product image, slogan, or video to make it as authentic as possible.
Content infringement
When a company has trademarked words, using them outside of its context can also be considered a trademark infringement.
Metacode infringement
The most recent form of infringement is Meta infringement or infringing the name on the meta-code. In this case, only search engines and filters read like describing an image (image alt description) with a brand name, for instance, infringing file names, etc.
Webinar/ From Fake to Fraud: Why traditional anti-counterfeit efforts are not enough
When assessing their pains, legal counsels, lawyers, or brand protection officers will often point at legal issues, commonly trademark infringement or counterfeit sales. Phishing attacks, look-alike pages, or brand/CEO impersonations to name a few were traditionally considered cybersecurity issues. However, when companies cover these threats as part of their brand protection program, they achieve better security and reduce costs.
Hundreds of brand protection experts have already adopted such a brand protection program. Why so? One word: efficiency. By combining cyber security and legal protection, you do not lose time coordinating two different departments. You have one strong team assuring the protection of your brand on several fronts. Detecting external online threats requires the same technology both for legal and cybersecurity issues, and the takedowns require the same know-how, so why not unify them under one roof? You will rapidly notice that you are saving your time, money, and overhead costs.
Do you wish to strengthen your anti-counterfeiting efforts? Watch our webinar here.
Blog Post: Trademark Infringement and Online Brand Protection
To assure that your trademarks are well protected, you need efficient online brand protection, that’s a given. But when you have one, you need to make sure to avoid these common mistakes:
- Focusing on main domains
- Superficial analysis
- Ignoring social media
In other cases, you will expose your brand to online attacks if you only protect your registered domain. Make sure to also protect yourself from external digital threats and monitor these important elements:
- Visuals of both company logos and product images
- Written & recorded content
- Form-based phishing attacks hunting for customers’ personal information
If you want to learn more about trademark infringement and online brand protection, read our blog.