Online brand protection does not have to be an overly onerous or complicated function of a business. There are some straight forward actions that brands can take to avoid expensive and time consuming IP battles and future proof themselves from being targeted by bad actors.
- Be forward thinking when registering your Intellectual Property, such as trademarks, patents and domain names
Look beyond where you operate today and consider potential markets in the medium and long term. It is much easier to enter a new market when all of your IP is lined up.
The Madrid protocol will enable you to register your trademarks (TM) in multiple jurisdictions while domain name management companies such as Netnames can assist with registering your domain names in different countries.
As a rule of thumb, if you own a TM or patent in a specific country ensure that you register the correspondence country code top level domain name (ccTLD). For example, if you have an Australian trademark for ACME, you would also want to register the main Australian ccTLD acme.com.au. This is called domain name TM alignment.
Cyber squatters, IP trolls, counterfeiters and opportunists make good livings fleecing less organized brands of their IP, so the more organized your IP portfolio is, the less opportunity bad actors will have to profit of your goodwill.
- Don’t forget to register your Social Media handles
Many companies around the world do not control their brands name-sake in social media handles. Some were late to the party while others just don’t have the capacity to keep up with the speed and volume of new social platforms rolling out.
Unregistered branded social media accounts are regularly snapped up by opportunists known as “username squatters” who try to obtain payment from brand owners in exchange for transferring them the username. Recovering handles from username squatters can be an expensive and time consuming process.
Being pro-active is the best course of action. Registering your brands and trademarks in as many social media sites as possible is the obvious first step. This may sound onerous, but it is quite simple with relatively affordable tools that facilitate bulk social media handle registration.
For example, a “do it all / bulk social media registration tool” is knowem.com. They cover many social media categories and you can register up to 300 handles/accounts for only $649 which includes registration and email confirmation and uploading the logo, description, URL and profile which has the added bonus of giving your flagship 300 new inbound links.
- Register your IP in China.
it is critical these days to register your IP (trademarks, domains and/or patents) in China due to its rampant infringement of western brands, particularly if you manufacture a product.
The counterfeit industry is huge in China, worth almost $461 billion according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Unlike western trademark filing systems such as the US or Australia, China is a first-to-file jurisdiction, which means that any third party can register a trademark and hold brands hostage until they pay to acquire it.
Brands like Apple, Nike and Facebook have learnt this lesson the hard way and have struggled to defend their brand names from bad faith registration in China. So, the rule here is to register your trademark as soon as possible.
Similarly, cybersquatting on .cn domain names has resulted in many brands either handing over exorbitant funds to acquire the .cn domain name or they have been forced to use an alternative .cn domain name.
The issue with .cn cybersquatted domain names is that the IP owner only has two years to submit a complaint, otherwise they lose all recourse to recover it through the Chinese domain name dispute system.
Like with trademarks, register your .cn domain names as soon as possible, and if it is registered by a third-party initiate a complaint as soon as possible (assuming that it is within the two year allowance period).
- Monitor and Enforce
Online brand monitoring software scans various channels on the web to identify instances or IP infringement or brand damaging content. It allows you to identify infringers who:
- register domain names that are identical or confusingly similar,
- advertise fake products on various online properties,
- username squat on social media accounts,
- rogue websites and many other different types of brand infringement that could hurt your reputation.
You can engage service providers such as Netnames who offer an online brand protection service that includes both monitoring and enforcement. Afterall, what’s the point of finding an infringement if nothing is done about it.
The enforcement function is where expert takedown specialist work with either the domain name Registrar, the ISP that hosts the infringing website, social media platform or online marketplace to enforce their client’s IP rights and get the infringing content removed.
Quick and consistent removal of instances of IP infringement discourages bad actors to infringe on vigilant brand owners IP. Having an online brand protection program set up in the early stages of a brand’s life cycle significantly reduces the problem of offline brand infringement.
Don't Be That Brand 