August 2014

Kelly McCarthy writes “Don’t Ya Just Love E-Commerce? Effective Web Monitoring Programs for Anti-counterfeiting” for InsideCounsel

Share

Whack-a-mole, plugging holes in a dam, swatting flies, the zombie apocalypse. No matter the analogy, fighting online anti-counterfeiting can seem like a never-ending battle which is impossible to win. Many brand owners are so overwhelmed by the process and paralyzed by indecision that they do nothing and pretend the problem is not growing. While it is true that anti-counterfeiting can be a monumental task, doing nothing is the best way to be assured that it will get completely out of control.

Like any problem, it is much easier to make progress if broken down into component parts. In our first article of this series we talked about the threshold issue of budgeting for anti-counterfeiting. In the second, we discussed positioning a trademark portfolio for maximum effects on counterfeits. In the third article we outlined the benefits of working with U.S. Customs. In this article, we turn to online monitoring and what it takes to implement a program to take action against the onslaught of fakes readily available to customers at the click of a mouse.