Here, our legal experts outline common stumbling blocks that stop you from quickly or effectively eliminating digital scams and impersonations. They also unpack the specific difficulties that individuals and organizations face when fighting infringements on their own, as opposed to seasoned IP teams and Online Brand Protection professionals. Understanding the trouble with takedowns delivers the most successful anti-scam strategy, so let’s get into it.    

Slow Response Times 

Response times present one of the biggest hurdles between you and a successful takedown. Waiting for someone to check their emails as a customer service team passes you onto the correct department, and the vast cogs of an international ecommerce platform slowly turn, delivers endless frustration for an unlucky business.    

Scammers exploit these delays, moving their listings and popping up across different channels. Limited resources turn a lone company’s Online Brand Protection tactics into an uphill struggle. 

By contrast, expert IP enforcement teams rely on hard-earned working relationships with all major platforms. Beyond that, industry experience with takedowns gives enforcement experts name-recognition with stakeholders at key platforms. These reputations move marketplaces and registries to action their requests promptly and effectively.   

How Marketplace Variations Complicate Takedowns

An ideal ecommerce landscape would offer a universal takedown form, in an accessible place, with minimum admin and maximum results. However, many businesses suffer an online experience that’s anything but ideal. Each marketplace and registrar requires different forms of infringement reporting in different areas of their website. Typically, businesses must set up a different account and communicate with a different stakeholder at a different address to flag each infringement. Each marketplace, and each registry, comes with its own set of intricate terms and conditions to navigate. Even when you reach the right stakeholder and get a response, one technicality could send you right back to square one.   

By contrast, expert IP enforcement teams go beyond working relationships with their counterparts at marketplaces and registries. Experienced teams like EBRAND access custom platforms and avenues only available to industry experts. For example. Alibaba’s IPP platform credits professionals with the authority to expedite requests, and only with enough credit and reputation can you achieve the right outcomes. EBRAND takedown specialists also access platform APIs to automate their takedown requests. Rather than waiting for a bot or an overworked employee, EBRAND IP teams integrate their detections, requests, and outcomes at the click of a button. 

Regional Legislation Variations 

Further challenges arise from regional legislation variations, which complicate the takedown process to no end. Different countries and legislative regions require different laws governing intellectual property rights and online commerce, making it challenging to navigate the legal landscape effectively.    

Businesses often register trademarks with one authority, only to find scammers and counterfeiters hawking their wares in a different jurisdiction. As strong as an EU trademark is within the Union, many businesses find that they mean little to nothing across all the other continents. These discrepancies create heaps of red tape, paperwork, and delays, and when it comes to protecting your brand, time is of the essence.  

Takedowns raise regional difficulties in different parts of the world. Local authorities often require takedown requests in their own language, including a full range of documentation. Beyond that, they may also require local notary services and verified power of attorney, with full translations. Some even require complainants to prove their identity by registering local phone numbers. These administrative requirements create a heavy workload for individual businesses looking to protect their brand across diverse markets.  

This red tape can create crucial time lags in a company’s takedown strategy, leaving cybercriminals to wreak havoc with your brand.    

Incorrect Takedowns and Corporate Liability 

Another obstacle that businesses encounter when defending their IP on marketplaces and digital platforms involves liability and incorrect takedowns. Ultimately, nobody’s perfect. Working under pressure with limited resources, brands may accidentally request takedowns against other legitimate businesses or listings online. Best-case scenarios involve cumbersome and time-consuming backtracking, apologies to the offended party, and sanctions from the relevant platform. However, accidental or wrongful takedowns can also result in legal action, along with severe and costly consequences.   

Professional IP teams help you double-check your requests, follow rules to the letter of the law, and expedite resolution processes in the event of an error. 

How Modern Scam Tactics Resist your Takedowns

The modern scam landscape does its best to thwart businesses protecting their brands, as scammers pioneer effective new digital tactics. Firstly, by leveraging AI, cybercriminals pump out more scams than ever before. This frequency overwhelms businesses with the sheer scale of the issue at hand. 

Secondly, some scammers use geo-blocking. This sneaky tactic ensures that their fake listing or fraudulent website only appears to visitors in certain regions. Others only resolve in specific languages or exclusively on mobile rather than browsers. These tactics pose huge issues for independent businesses. Detecting a scam in the first place, let alone explaining to a large registrar how a fake shop only appears on mobile, makes it an arduous task for businesses who want to focus on growth and innovation themselves.   

Solutions with EBRAND 

By partnering with EBRAND, companies gain access to our extensive experience, industry connections, and cutting-edge AI-driven software platform. Our team of technical experts and IP lawyers leverage these resources to streamline the takedown process. This ensures swift and effective removal of infringing listings across multiple platforms and jurisdictions.  

We’re well-known by key stakeholders at each relevant platform, and our experience in the field helps us get the job done accurately. Relationships, expertise, and technical tools like APIs help us optimize takedowns and protect brands online. A comprehensive Online Brand Protection solution combines tools powered by advanced technologies and AI with the support you need for effective takedowns.  

In conclusion, the road to eliminating infringements is fraught with challenges. However, proactive steps help businesses safeguard their brands and their products online. With the right support and insights, companies navigate the complex landscape of online enforcement with confidence, protecting their assets from unauthorized use. 

The post The Trouble with Takedowns: Expert Insights for Eliminating Listings and Online Infringements  appeared first on EBRAND.

Understanding your obstacles helps you decide your best course of action, and that’s what we’ll cover today. It’s not easy to detect and tackle malicious ecommerce domains, but with the right tactics and tools, it’s possible. The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) issued a record number of UDRP domain dispute resolutions in 2022, underlining the surge of IP infringements affecting domains and websites today. These record-breaking figures highlight the unprecedented need for brands to get involved and protect themselves and their customers online. Informed strategies deliver the best results through a step-by-step guide to eliminating fake shops online. 

Emerging trends to anticipate in your strategy

In our previous post on fake shops, we discussed how scammers promote their fraudulent stores on social media platforms. It’s important for businesses to consider these tactics when developing their anti-scam strategies. Fake sellers infiltrate people’s online lives, exploiting the trust and familiarity they’ve built on social media to spread their scams.

Understanding how these scams are orchestrated provides valuable insights into the sheer scale and rapid growth of the issue. Today, we are witnessing the emergence of an entire fake shop industry, where nefarious actors mimic professional organizations, complete with logistics and marketing strategies. 

These cybercriminals employ a range of tactics to proliferate their deceptive shops. They exploit legitimate platforms like Shopify, while deploying hundreds or even thousands of malicious e-commerce domains. In addition, they harness AI, leveraging language learning models like ChatGPT to pilfer and artfully rephrase website content at scale. This dynamic approach allows them to continuously refine their fake shops, making them all the more convincing to their unsuspecting targets. 

As these scammers continually refine the frequency and effectiveness of their fake shops, it is imperative that businesses proactively take measures to thwart their operations and protect their customers. 

Tackling fake shops step-by-step 

We’ve broken down the fight against fake shops into three steps, so you can see how brand protection experts research, monitor, and eliminate infringements online.

Step 1: Research 

Like any battleplan, you need to know your enemy in order to tackle fraudulent stores online. Researching fake shops with a simple search across online channels helps you build a list of evolving scams. Cybercriminals use every online channel available to maximize traffic to their scams, giving brand protection experts plenty to research. Businesses use search engines, marketplaces, and social media searches to cast the net wide. When you alternatively think like a scammer, and think like a consumer, you’ll build an increasingly accurate map of the threat landscape. 

Conducting these kinds of searches initiates your journey towards discovering fake shops. Other platforms and channels require more technical tools to detect and catalog suspicious results. However, this initial search forms a key first step. Researching and listing suspicious results around your brand lays the foundations for tackling fake shops.  

Step 2: Monitoring 

After understanding the threat landscape affecting your brand, monitoring your results helps you succeed in your next steps. Effective monitoring delivers two outcomes: further evidence gathering, and threat prioritization. Evidence gathering delivers the data you need to fuel your takedown procedures, and risk monitoring helps you decide which fake shops to tackle first. 

When brands detect a fake shop through their research, they should monitor some key attributes to fuel their takedown strategy. These include: 

• The volume, style, and content of their product listings 
• Traffic and hyperlinks to other pages 
• Contact details, or links to social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, possibly providing hints for offline, real-world investigations 
• Links to payment providers 
• Stolen copyrights and trademarks, like imagery, branding, and text 

Monitoring any changes helps you predict their behavior and anticipate escalations in their threats to your business. To take these outlets down, you often need evidence, so monitoring fake shops as they evolve supports successful anti-scam action.  

Step 3: Action 

Ultimately, online platforms and legal authorities want you to succeed against fake shops. That’s why they provide frameworks for reporting and eliminating infringements. With enough evidence, tools, and connections, you can levy decisive action against scammers. Social media platforms and online marketplaces often feature reporting tools directly from their channels, providing your first steps in anti-scam action. 

Above, you can see Instagram’s reporting tool. It’s always worth exploring options like these, whenever you find a fake shop on a media platform or online marketplace. However, suspicious outlets hosted on their own domains require a different approach.  

When scammers impersonate your brand on their own domains, you can escalate legal proceedings to takedown or take over their digital assets. Legal options include UDRPs, URS, and DMCAs. These tactics require a legal team’s time and resources, and they set a strong deterrent against scammers.  

With fake shops on the rise, enforcing your brand online takes more work, expertise, and technical acumen than ever. Many businesses opt to collaborate with brand protection experts to achieve these goals. EBRAND’s Online Brand Protection solution streamlines takedown channels and provides all the technical and legal support brands need to eliminate infringements. 

Conclusions: Taking control of fake Internet shopping sites

Fake Internet shopping sites might seem insurmountable, but existing solutions combat these attacks on brands and consumers effectively.  

Following the steps outlined above, including research, vigilant monitoring, and decisive action, helps you tackle fake shops. However, the true power lies in combining these steps with advanced technical solutions. AI scrapers and algorithmic threat assessment let you confront infringements on a larger scale. The synergy between state-of-the-art software and the insights of an experienced, dedicated team empowers swift and effective action. Together, we can safeguard brands and consumers, delivering effective action against fake shops. 

At EBRAND, we’ve just launched brand new, high-impact AI-powered tools to detect and eliminate fraudulent stores online. Get a free fake shop audit here, and you’ll find out how many outlets are hawking your wares online  right now.   

The post Tackling fake shops: Step by step, from detection to deletion  appeared first on EBRAND.

Protective EU legislation extended to 800 local products

The EU maintains a vested interest in protecting culturally significant European products. These delicacies put local cultures on the map, while enriching the lives of consumers around the world, and crucially, generating billions of Euros every year. Categories like Geographical Indications (GIs) and Protected Designations of Origin (PDOs) go some way towards enshrining local products in EU law, recognizing both their valuable reputation and their attractiveness to malicious third-parties.

Since 1993, the EU’s PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) laws certified consumable products like Irish whisky and Roquefort cheese. Legislators expanded these protections as recently as May 2023 to cover products across new categories such as textiles, jewellery, and pottery, extending the PGI to 800 products across 27 countries. 

The PGI’s expanded remit provides the legislative framework, but artisans, SMEs, and multi-nationals still struggle to enforce their rights, particularly in evolving markets online. 

Do European producers feel informed and protected against online scams?

A recent guide from AREPO (The Association of Regional European Product Origins) highlights some glaring concerns among European creators about their products’ protection from digital risks. As ecommerce increases, scammers take advantage of digital attack surfaces like domain infrastructure to impersonate or hijack legitimate brands online. Hackers and impersonators extort businesses, siphoning legitimate revenues and undermining authentic consumer experiences. These risks specifically affect prized European GI or Geographical Indication products, due to their high reputational and financial value. 

AREPO themselves find that:

“there is currently no strong protection for GIs in terms of domain name allocation, and the very liberal approach proposed by ICANN […] threatens the protection of GIs on the Internet, whose rights are not always upheld.”

GI infringements sap more than 4 billion Euros from the EU economy every year, and 60% of AREPO respondents stated that they don’t regularly monitor potential internet fraud on their products. It’s no wonder, then, that the AREPO report recommends EBRAND services help European producers protect their products online.

How EBRAND protects European producers, according to AREPO

The AREPO report highlights EBRAND’s value for local producers, as users:

“quickly detect all infringements of geographical indications, trademarks, products or corporate identity on a large majority of Internet channels, such as websites, e-commerce sites, marketplaces, social networks, or the dark web.”

EBRAND Corporate Domain Management helps defend against cybersquatting and hijacking, Digital Risk Protectiondisarms scammers online and on the dark web, and Online Brand Protection reinforces legitimate ecommerce. 

Conclusions

Ultimately, well-enforced protection helps European producers boost their products in the EU and beyond. Producers protect their creations to cement their reputations and secure their revenues. Regulated ecommerce empowers artisans and their clients to cherish local delicacies while sustaining vital livelihoods.

Experts at EBRAND will be more than happy to help you boost and protect your produce, to maintain the long-term value of local and regional treasures for years to come.

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In a country of 1.4 billion people, the reality is as complex as its geography. While a large part of the population (nearly 60%) still makes a living on $2 to $10 a day, the new Chinese consumers, who are rather young (20 to 35 years old), urban and educated, distinguish themselves from their parents by frequently buying online. Half of them are women and all of them now prioritize quality and authenticity over low cost. Henri Joli, an international fashion expert who now lives in Shanghai after 20 years with Jean-Paul Gaultier, explains it this way: «There are more and more Chinese businesswomen who don’t want to have the same outfit as their neighbors or even look like anyone else.»

Searching for authenticity between the counterfeit

Finding «the real thing«, the dreamed authentic product, can be a real quest for the Chinese (middle-class) consumers, especially in their own country where the markets (physical or digital) are flooded with counterfeit products. Also, to avoid these counterfeits, especially when it comes to food or pharmaceutical products, Chinese buyers have resorted for a few years to a process called «daigou» (in Mandarin: buying for someone). This practice consists of handing over a large sum of money to a trusted person, a «personal shopper» in charge of buying the desired goods abroad, in Europe or the United States, in exchange for a commission. This is a win-win situation for both the buyer, who pays less than in China (avoiding import taxes), and the commissionaire, who benefits from an additional income.

For emerging luxury brands that wish to develop their activities in China but have neither a location (lack of funds) nor the necessary authorizations, the «daigou» process is a real opportunity. It allows them to make themselves known across online platforms that young consumers regularly visit in order to be always at the cutting edge of fashion and among the first to discover and acquire new products.

EXPERT ADVICE

Fighting the spread of counterfeit products on Chinese platforms is becoming a real business challenge. Chinese luxury counterfeits tripled in the last ten years, posing serious questions for producers and consumers alike. Domestic consumer culture searches for authenticity, and China remains the largest market for luxury brands and the first buyer of «made in France» cosmetics.

This is the heart of the problem: authenticity is never guaranteed in China, for any product. For this reason, the monitoring of Chinese sales platforms and e-commerce sites is essential. The basic principle to fight effectively against the sale of counterfeit products, and more generally to control your distribution network on the Internet when you are a European company, is based on the implementation of an automated surveillance. This allows:

1. the detection of fraudulent ads,
2. the removal of these ads,
3. the identification and notification of sellers in violation.

ARGOS, EBRAND’s anti-counterfeiting monitoring tool, detects suspicious ads. These are then analyzed by legal experts who confirm the counterfeit nature of the product offered before requesting its immediate removal from the platform. In addition, the tool identifies useful information about the offending sellers and thus contributes to the investigation, with a view to taking action.

Find out more about how ARGOS works, and discover new ways to connect your business with eager consumers.

The post Counterfeit? No! The Chinese consumer wants «the real thing»! appeared first on EBRAND.

Everyone know that fakes circulate online. Counterfeiters target luxury brands, exploiting impressive price tags and loyal customer bases. However, there’s a big difference between anecdotal evidence, and the expert insights from a legal professional. EBRAND’s experts teamed up with The World Trademark Review to dig deeper into the topic, exploring world-leading research and specific cases with the most famous labels.

Our legal eagles Karolina and Luc take you through the state of the luxury counterfeit market and its impact on luxury brands, from Chanel to Gucci. In today’s globalized world, the role of the Internet in the development of the counterfeit market is bigger than ever. Whether it’s through e-commerce giant platforms or social media, online trading of counterfeit goods has boomed over the last few years.

Discover their guide here to get ahead of the scammers, and learn more about counterfeit trends and how to tackle them.

If you want to find out more about digital threats to the industry, from revenue loss to reputational damage, you should explore our dedicated page. There, we lay out a full overview of the prevailing priorities, concerns, risks, objectives, and solutions.

The page’s FAQs also tackle counterfeiting vulnerabilities, business expansion, phishing attacks, and ROI.

The post Fakes or luxuries: The counterfeit market for high-luxury brands appeared first on EBRAND.

If a mark is registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse, such claim notice is sent as a warning to anyone attempting to register a domain name which matches the trademark term. Over 500,000 such Claims Notices have been delivered already on the basis of – per mid October 2014 – over 33.000 trademarks registered by 13.601 organizations in the TMCH covering 119 jurisdictions worldwide.

These metrics show that the Claim Notice is clearly working as deterrent. The high number of Claim Notices also indicates a high level of interest in trademarked terms from third parties.

A total of 129.095 official claim notifications have been sent out to potential infringers who have registered domains despite prior claim notice. The trademark owners have been informed in parallel.

So far, only a small part of new domain extensions have been launched. There are over 1.000 new extensions still to come. Also ICANN has announced a “second opening” : in 2016 or 2017 again, a new wave of domain extensions can be expected which will guarantee the usefulness of TMCH registrations for at least the next 5 years.

In sum : The TMCH remains the only universal rights protection system across the entire programme of new domain extensions. By recording protected terms in the TMCH, trademark owners are being offered the best protection available as more new domains are deployed. Together with the URS and UDRP, the TMCH completes ICANN’s right protection toolbox, and is the first line of defense as well as the most cost-efficient way before taking any litigating step.

Key Trademark Clearinghouse Facts:

Important : All mark records that were submitted for one year before the 4th of November 2013, will expire this year as from the 5th of November.

Notifications : 60 days – 30 days –(10 days grace period) starting from the 14th of November 2014 (cut-off day) – see below for details Expired Status : No changes possible once a record received an expired status.
Renewability : Once a mark record is within 1 year of expiring the option to renew with the Trademark Clearinghouse will become possible.

Duration : Any mark which is eligible for renewal, can be renewed via TMCH Genius for 1, 3 or 5 years.

Pricing : The same as new records.

Impact to Mark Record :

a) Renewal : SMD files will be revoked and regenerated (the “notBefore” and “notAfter” dates will be updated in the new SMD file). Also the Certificates will be revoked and regenerated.
b) Expiration : status will change to expired. SMD file and Certificate will be revoked.

Protect your business, and optimize your TMCH registrations with end-to-end Corporate Domain Management.

The post The Renewal Process within the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) appeared first on EBRAND.

Set up in 2009, Tokopedia has followed the mission to democratize commerce through technology, as most of Indonesian trade was centered around big cities with limited access to goods by consumers who inhabited smaller islands of the Indonesian archipelago. With the world’s 4th largest population, Indonesia is also becoming a popular location for fake goods factories due to cheap labor. As Indonesia is considered a developing country, so are its economy and the spending power of its populace, who cannot afford real designer brands and luxury items and therefore turn to counterfeits.

Since its beginning, Tokopedia has been receiving generous funding from private investment groups and global venture capitals with the most recent investment of $2.2 billion from the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. It is also expected to secure further funding from Temasek Holdings (Singaporean state-owned enterprise) and Google.

Tokopedia facilitates not only the shopping experience, but extends its offer to fintech, payments, logistics and webstore partnerships. Its online marketplace is based on the idea of user generated content, which means that any product available on Tokopedia is uploaded and sold by independent users. The service is free to use and anyone can open an online store within a matter of minutes. This obviously opens the door to illegitimate vendors and fake dealers.

The 2019 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy prepared by The Office of the United States Trade Representative states that large numbers of fake products, ranging from fashion items, cosmetics and accessories to textbooks, some of them sold openly on the platform, are regularly reported by right holders. However, rights enforcement proves troublesome due to unclear reporting procedures and excessive demands for required documents. Moreover, Tokopedia’s administrators seem to take little care in blocking repetitive offenders, with some of them allegedly active on the marketplace for the past seven years.

Counterfeit trade is not the only problematic aspect of Tokopedia. In March 2020 the platform suffered a cyberattack which affected 91 million users (almost 100% of Tokopedia customers), as their personal data was stolen and offered on sale on the Darknet. A few months later the stolen information appeared on Facebook to be downloaded by everyone and free of charge. Although the platform’s management assured that passwords and payment details remained safe thanks to applied encryption methods, it is clear that Tokopedia did not implement sufficient security measures to protect their customers’ data. As a consequence, Tokopedia faced a court case filed by The Indonesian Consumer Community.

According to Tokopedia, their services are used by over 100 million people monthly including almost 10 million merchants. Due to the fact that it functions based on user generated content, the platform does not take direct responsibility for any infringing content. Even though Tokopedia provides steps to report listings which violate IP rights, it is actually impossible to find the respective buttons and links through which a product can be reported.

EBRAND is there to help with discovering counterfeits, unauthorized sellers and trademark abuse of your brand products. Our innovative platform detects infringing content and calculates the risk that it poses to your brand. We monitor the most popular marketplaces, including Tokopedia, in search of product piracy and our expert legal team follows enforcement procedures unique to each marketplace. If you are interested in protecting your brand against counterfeiting using automated, intuitive and time-saving solutions, do not hesitate to contact our specialists.

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