Your brand is an asset and an investment, so if your business lacks the right image, you stand on the losing side. Without taking the necessary precautions, you place your brand in a position of vulnerability which could be costly for your business.
What Is Brand Protection?
While brand abuse is anything done to infringe upon your intellectual property, brand protection is any action to protect you from infringement. These are legal means that deter anyone from counterfeiting, copyrighting, or performing any other form of infringement.
Intellectual property doesn’t necessarily mean protecting your intellect; instead, it is protecting the works of your mind. Anything from brand logo or other artistic creation to product invention falls under intellectual property and needs to be protected.
Why Is Brand Protection Important?
Brand infringers have a way of smelling the success of your business. They, therefore, make it their life’s mission to taint your work and poison you against your consumers. Aside from losing out on your elementary streams of revenue and customer trust, your business could take a hit in legal fees. If one of your product imitations causes any physical effects on a consumer, they might sue you for compensation.
Keeping on top of all these infringers while managing your business can be challenging. Luckily for you, there are ways to better protect your brand.
How to Protect Your Brand and Intellectual Property Rights
Advancements in technology have made it easier to track infringers offline and online. To ensure your business continues to grow, here are six tips that work to protect your identity as a brand.
Copyright Your Original Creations:
Copyrighting helps protect your original work from counterfeiting and gives you a legal standing to enforce the copyright in a federal court. It is designed to safeguard the unique representation of any original creation. It can be applied to a wide range of items, such as the colour and material of your packaging.
Trademark Other Aspects of Your Brand
Trademarks Services help to protect the words, phrases, and designs that define your brand. For example, your company logo, the brand name, and other catchphrases or slogans used to push marketing or bring about brand awareness are examples of trademarks. If you ever suspect trademark infringement, you need to consider doing intellectual property investigations.
Keyword Monitoring
This is effective in catching online counterfeiters. If they have an online presence, they will try to use keywords similar to your product brand to push sales. This can easily manipulate your consumers into purchasing, especially if they sell at a much lower price than what you offer on your site. However, when you use a sophisticated software platform to keep track of the keywords mainly used by counterfeiters, you can handle the problem before it worsens.
Image Matching and Optical Character Recognition
When counterfeits masquerade as your products, they usually resemble your initial packaging in a way that most consumers might fail to notice. Dedicated software will help you analyse products on the internet while simultaneously comparing them to your brand and alert you when a match has been made.
Optical Character Recognition identifies keywords relating to your brand that have been hidden within an image to escape keyword monitoring.
Educate Your Consumers
When advertising your product, ensure you highlight key features that distinguish it from others in the market. This ensures your audience has a better chance of noticing a fake from your original.
Network Analysis
This allows you to unmask an organized network of connected infringement activity across all social media platforms and online sites.
Trademark Registration Class
In this competitive market, Trademark registration is essential for every business to save its brand reputation. Trademark can be a sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others. To register a Trademark in the name of any Person (Natural or Artificial), such person (himself/through his Trademark agent) shall file its Trademark in different class as prescribed by Trademark department.
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What Is Trademark Registration Class?
On the basis of nature of activities performed by a business, Trademark department has prescribed the Trademark Registration Classes. nature of activities performed by a business includes –
- Manufacturing of Products by the Company
- Purchase or sale made by the company
- Services provided by the Company
Once the Proprietor identifies the classes in which their activities fall. Now, the proprietor may apply for Trademark Registration by following the procedure mentioned below:
- Choose a Trademark Registration
- Trademark Search Report
- Application for TM Registration
Conclusion
When you fail to protect your brand, you risk product counterfeiting. While this may seem like a minor issue, it negatively affects your image on the market, which will injure your sales and reputation. If your customers can’t trust you, they won’t do business with you.
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