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Intellectual Property Infringement is very detrimental to a business selling online. Learn how to enforce your IP rights and protect your products, brand and consumers!
In the digitalization era, businesses have shifted most (if not all) of their assets online, giving them higher visibility, at the price of higher vulnerability. If not protected by law, businesses can see their hard work go down the drain due to hackers and counterfeiters.
Such laws include Intellectual Property (IP) rights, which specifically prevent such attacks by protecting IP owners. These rights are used to protect a companies and users’ creations, including trademarks, designs, symbols, logos, names and images. These rights allow its owners to have exclusive control over its use and distribution.
Want to know why IP rights are a valuable asset for businesses and how to enforce them? Keep reading this article to find out!
As mentioned above, there are several types of IP, such as:
Online content protected by copyright law, including literary, artistic, and musical pieces.
Protects brand identifiers used in commerce, such as logos and brand names.
Protect an individual's inventions and processes, both tangible and intangible.
Infringement of Intellectual Property occurs when the protected IP rights are used by an unauthorized third party. Such infringements that take place are:
Counterfeits, although the most obvious form of IP abuse, are sometimes very difficult to detect to an untrained eye. These fakes recreate the look and feel of a product without the owner’s authorization.
Contrary to counterfeits, lookalikes don’t inherently a total intellectual property infringement of the original product. However, they do implement distinctive features, misleading consumers.
Design infringements also typically imitate the look and feel of another brand. However, differently from counterfeits, design infringements exclude the use of original logos.
This technique consists of exploiting legal systems by registering trademarks of well-known or up-and-coming brands in countries or territories where the brand doesn’t have a registered mark yet.
Contrary to the previous IP infringements, brand impersonation isn’t an infringement on a brand’s product or service, but their social media presence. In other words, this infringement involves mimicking a brand’s account on social media to confuse consumers and followers.
Rogue Sites are created to imitate an original brand’s website in order to convince consumers that they are buying on the official site, putting them in danger of identity and financial data theft.
Infringement of Intellectual Property affects both online and offline businesses, putting their products, consumers and brand at risk. Additionally, enforcing IP rights not only protects businesses, but encourages innovation and promotes fair competition.
Avoiding IP infringements is key to a successful and protected business. Here are some examples:
This is the case for hiring contractors and third parties since, unless explicitly stated in your contract, their creations don’t automatically transfer to your business.
IP infringement can also occur with product development if the patents for the products used are not assigned to the business.
The most important step to avoid IP infringements is to keep track of your brand and products online: here’s where we can help you! In Smart Protection, we use advanced technology and human expertise to monitor, detect, analyze, report and eliminate IP infringements across main marketplaces and social networks.
Enforcing your IP rights protects your business, product, authorized distributors and consumers. This legal protection preserves your brand reputation, quality and trustworthiness, adding value to your product and business as a whole.
When it comes to protecting your IP rights, we are the ones to call! At Smart Protection, we understand the importance of authenticity and help brands protect their work. With tools such as Ecommerce Monitoring, you will regain control of your business online and keep total peace of mind.
If you want to protect your brand online and receive constant up-to-date information about your online sales and distribution, don’t hesitate to Request a Demo!
