What is Brand Protection?
Brand Protection is a very broad and general term, it encompasses a range of actions to stop your brand identity being copied. It involves shielding all of your intellectual property (IP) – whether that’s trademarks, patents, color marks – everything encompassing your brand – from infringement.
You can probably guess that it’s not enough to have your IP protected in the first place. That’s sadly only half of the story. Brand protection is about enforcement – if impersonators are going to be crass enough to copy your ideas or image, they clearly do not mind that you actually have IP protection in place. They need to be approached and stopped.
Why is Brand Protection So Important?
As a business owner, however large or small your company is, you are a professional at spinning plates.
You already have to be an expert, or pay to employ experts, in so many areas in order to turn a profit. Why should you care about what other competitors are doing, when you could be investing in moving forwards and growth?
Well, the benefits of building a robust brand protection strategy really do pay for themselves.
- People who copy your idea will not deliver the same quality or customer care. Clients will confuse these poor imitations with your brand. Damage control for your reputation takes so much more time and energy than stopping the imitators in the first place.
- Companies who copy your idea are taking away vital sales which will impact your bottom line. You created your product or service because there was a need in the market. Brand protection means you capture all of that market and reap the rewards for doing so.
- Save time. Not only do you save time from physically having to try and recover your reputation, there is something to be said about the mental energy that dealing with imitators takes up. What could you do with all those extra hours that taking brand protection seriously from the start will free up?
Save money. Letting infringements of your IP get out of control and run rampant is an expensive job to clear up. Having a solid strategy in place before things get out of hand not only saves you time, but also makes economic sense.
How Do I Implement a Brand Protection Strategy?
We’ve come up with a three point strategy – the A,B,C of brand protection – in order to make your brand protection as simple and easy to digest as possible.
A - Ambition - What do you want to get out of Brand Protection Strategy?
Your company is unique so your brand protection strategy needs to be unique too. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. To work out what is right for your firm, you should start by evaluating your aims and objectives.
For example, if your business is smaller or just starting out, your aim will be to make sure that the legal protection of your IP is rock solid and that you have a team behind you that you trust who can take care of any infringements without delay.
Larger, more established companies’ ambition for their strategy will be completely different. At this stage, they will want to make the life of their sales team as easy as possible and to protect their share of the market.
Having a clear idea of where you want your business to go in the future is essential so that your brand protection attorney can give you the most specific, detailed advice for your situation.
B - Body - What does my Brand Protection Strategy Look Like?
As we discussed, a successful brand protection strategy includes many different arms and legs. And, the exact steps taken will depend on your answers to A above. Some of the measures could include:
Education
Invest time and energy in educating all members of staff what they should be aware of and the correct course of action to take. It is essential that everyone is on the same page.
Brand protection is not something that should be reserved for upper management or just one specific department to take care of. If you’ve already built a loyal customer base, you could also invest in educating your clientele to involve them in your strategy. Customers who care will want to stop infringements just as much as you and they should know how best to act if they spot fakes.
Investigating
Gathering evidence of infringements is essential to the success of getting rid of them. Who will be responsible for looking out for copycats in the first place, and how will evidence be gathered when they are found?
How much time each week will be dedicated to this information gathering exercise? Oftentimes, it is invaluable to consult with an expert attorney to talk strategy in order to talk through the practical aspects of information gathering.
Approaching Violators
There are a few ways to deal with entities that infringe your intellectual property rights. The exact measures to take are usually led by the platform that they are trying to sell on. Make sure that you understand the procedures for each of the major selling platforms.
You should also take legal advice as to whether it would be worthwhile taking any further action once the seller has been taken down, depending on the severity of the violation.
Technology
Speaking broadly, there are three options when thinking about how your brand strategy will work in practice: manual investigation, the use of artificial intelligence and technology, or a hybrid combination of both. There are benefits of integrating the use of technology within your strategy.
For example, purchasing software can be cheaper than hiring full-time employees, the number of websites that AI can scan far outweighs that which humans can do and the software can often spot fakes pretty much as soon as they appear.
However, spotting violators is not the full solution. There is still something to be said for the personal, human touch in brand protection.
Brand protection software is not able to fully think through the different possible scenarios for dealing with the issue and weighing up the pros and cons of each. It is advisable for there to be some sort of human interaction at some point during the process so that real world experience can be applied.
C - Continue - Brand Protection Doesn’t Happen Overnight
In order to get best results, your brand protection legal team should be seen as an extension of your own team. As frustrating as it seems, the truth is that there will always be new imitators popping up. Although you can beef up your protections, there’s nothing you can do to stop infringements completely.
Commit both to continuing to invest in your current brand protection strategy as well as to periodically evaluating steps A and B as your business changes and grows. Overall, a successful brand protection strategy is key to running a successful business.
Free up mental energy, capture more customers and profits and maintain your stellar reputation. To speak to an expert member of our team for a no-strings-attached consultation, click on the button below to see how to reach us.
