Consumer interaction with brands is increasingly focused on the online space. As a result, developing a strong online brand and proactively protecting that brand have never been more important. Brand owners are consistently met with different threats, such as:

• Counterfeit Products
• Gray Market Goods
• Brand or Product Imitation
• Brand Abuse or Damage
• Domain Misuse or Appropriation
• Patent, Trademark or Copyright Infringement

These threats are often difficult to identify, monitor and prevent, particularly in an online environment that is becoming increasingly decentralized and where bad actors can hide in anonymity. Without a proactive online brand protection strategy, the damage, including market share loss, loss of goodwill/reputation, safety concerns and more, can be significant and irreversible.

To address these threats, Polsinelli’s Solare, named after an Italian word related to the sun for its ability to shine light on fraudulent online products and sales, creates a strategic feedback loop that is customized according to the nuances of your brands and your markets. There are three main elements of this loop: IP Development & Business Evaluation, Online Brand Protection and Targeted Enforcement.

IP Development and Business Evaluation

While a primary type of brand protection is through trademarks, design patents (to protect special packaging and user facing features), utility patents (to protect the inventive aspects of the product), domain names and copyrights can provide additional support. We work closely with brands to develop intellectual property protection specifically tailored for effective online enforcement and using online analytics. Polsinelli can and has developed policies regarding intellectual property development and enforcement on behalf of its clients. 

Beyond IP, Polsinelli helps develop policies that align across various spaces to provide a holistic policy foundation for brand protection and threat mitigation that is specifically tailored to the client’s business. This may include developing unilateral pricing policies that are compliant with appropriate laws and/or establishing policies corresponding to sourcing, procurement, sales, distribution, and licensing and regarding where and how products are sold, as well as trade policies for import and export. 

Online Brand Protection

Solare will provide continued analytics to demonstrate the impact of the online enforcement, with drill downs according to specific actors, specific threat type, online channels, regions and customized metrics. Gathering infringement data, which used to take hours, is complete in minutes.

Solare leverages cutting-edge tools for enforcing IP portfolio and brand policies across channel(s) where your brand faces threats. These solutions search vast amounts of online content using a model trained to specifically identify content that may be infringing the client’s IP or harmful to aspects of the brand. The results are continuously presented to us according to risk and priority for analysis and potential enforcement, where we can automatically generate an online complaint according to the requirements of different platforms with a single click. 

Further, we can update the models to search for content tailored alongside the evolution of the brand and emerging threats. For example, we can proactively train the models in anticipation of new product launches or announcements of new branding. The solutions generate online analytics identifying the locations of infringing or otherwise targeted content, the locations of the sellers or source of that content, and where applicable, the locations and volume of product stock. The tools identify and correlate data to generate forensic data about individual sellers, including different listing names associated with the seller, company names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, platforms and channels used, risk levels, stock levels and trends.

Targeted Enforcement

Targeted enforcement activities may involve additional monitoring, particular to the activity. For example, we work closely with Customs Border Protection to monitor and identify potentially infringing or counterfeit imports. Similarly, we may monitor for registration of fraudulent trademarks or other IP designed to harm a brand or masquerade as the true owner and take appropriate action. Using the online analytics specifically generated for you, we strategically and seamlessly escalate enforcement, including through:

• Customs and Border Patrol Actions
• Intellectual Property Litigation
• International Trade Commission Proceedings
• Law Enforcement Actions
• National Arbitration Forum (NAF) Proceedings
• Trademark Litigation
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Proceedings