Counterfeit Protection

The most elementary step to prevent the counterfeiting of your brand is to register your intellectual property (IP). Thereby you can prove and claim that you are the IP owner when detecting fake products. As a brand owner consider registering these intellectual properties:

Copyright
A copyright protects the original works of the creator. This can be literary work, music, art, software codes, architecture, and more. While copyright does not protect ideas, the owner of a copyright has the exclusive right to sell, publish, and/or reproduce the protected work. Copyright protection doesn’t need formal registration as creators are automatically granted protection for their work. However, if you want to sell or start enforcing your copyright, registration is recommended.

Patent
A patent prevents an invention from being created, sold, or used by any third party without permission. The patent owner holds the right to commercialize his patent including selling or giving licenses to the invention to another party formed in a mutual agreement. You can distinguish between design patents that protect the ornamental appearance of an item and utility patents that cover the functional aspects of an item. Patents, as well as copyrights, expire after a certain period. In the EU, patents usually last 20 years.

Trademark
Trademarks are symbols, words, phrases, sounds, smells, or color schemes that allow consumers to identify and distinguish the source of goods and services of one company from another. The Nike symbol and Apple logo are examples of trademarks. While patents protect one single innovation, a trademark can cover a range of products or services.

Registering your intellectual property in your own country allows you to start protecting your brand internationally. IP usually needs to be registered in each country under national law as copyrights, patents, and trademarks are not globally valid. Registration processes and fees can differ from country to country. If you want to learn more about building a robust IP portfolio, this Red Points Academy video gives insight into IP classifications and registration processes on a national and international level.

If you detect counterfeits of your product online, the first step is to take them down. The enforcement process depends on the platform where the infringement takes place.

Usually, ecommerce platforms and social media networks are aware of the problem and provide support for the enforcement process. However, knowing how to proceed on which platform helps you to act timely and efficiently.

Red Points’ Counterfeit Protection Solution utilizes artificial intelligence to automatically detect and remove online counterfeits. With the help of machine learning tools, such as keyword generation and image recognition, we are able to process the information retrieved across thousands of over 500 online marketplaces, websites, and social networks to detect fakes, piracy, or sellers online and allow our customers to take enforcement actions.

With counterfeiters now able to fully take advantage of the capabilities of the internet, the only way the services above can truly be implemented is by taking advantage of modern anti-counterfeit solutions and brand protection software.

There are four key aspects to an anti-counterfeiting solution:

• Keyword monitoring
• Image recognition
• Machine learning
• Smart user experience

Keyword monitoring
The first tool of brand protection is keyword monitoring. Counterfeits sold on ecommerce platforms rely on using specific keywords to appear in listings. For brand protection services, this means programming bots to continuously scour high-risk websites, looking for listings and other content with these keywords. Counterfeiters constantly update and change the keywords used to sell fakes in online marketplace listings, so this step is important for brands to keep up.

Image recognition
Image recognition refers to a type of software that can quickly analyze images online. Forms of image recognition vary in complexity. The simpler technology is photo recognition, which can search and find matching images. The most complex form is object recognition, which is able to find physical objects within a photo regardless of their position or placement within the image.

Machine learning
Machine learning is the ability of computers, using systems called neural networks, to repeatedly identify patterns and correlations in data, in order to create more precise and reliable search parameters. Once these new parameters are created, programs of keyword monitoring and image recognition are able to function more effectively to protect your brand online, improvements can be made continually.

Smart user experience
Brand protection is to be used by brands. Therefore, it’s important that the user experience is simple to understand and easy to use. Adopting a modern brand protection service saves a huge amount of time and money compared to hiring a team of lawyers. However, if that service requires the brand to spend hours going through complex data, then there is little advantage over simply employing legal personnel. A smart brand protection service must filter out unimportant details and only show users the details they need to make decisions quickly.