Written by Julia Shuvalova, freelance journalist and translator on behalf of BluePear.
Every trademark needs protection in the digital space, as competitors, detractors, scammers and even partners can play a dishonest game and try to reduce your company’s income and enrich themselves through your achievements. Unfortunately, there are a whole set of techniques to discredit your brand: the use or substitution of a logo, fake appeals on behalf of the company on social media, brand bidding, phishing, misuse and others. In this article, we present you the ultimate checklist to help ensure trademark protection and mention special services that offer 24/7 scanning to detect violations. You must remember that you may be unknowingly vulnerable, and detractors try to act in such a way that they are difficult to detect. The list will also help you define the level of protection of your copyrights.
The ultimate checklist
- It is recommended to register a trademark not only in the home zone, but also in all regions where it can be applied, distributed, and used. This will help to give judicial protection to your intellectual property. Don’t forget about the symbols associated with your TM, because they must also be registered.
- The owner should develop clear and precise rules for using his TM in the online space. If you specify all the conditions for the appearance of your symbols, images, and logos on the Internet, it will be simpler to identify violations. Your competitors and partners will know what you pay attention to when protecting your brand.
- Do not forget that you ought to keep a list of trading partners and intermediaries. When the procedure for detecting malicious actions takes place, you must clearly realise who exactly can distribute your products, and who can use your trademark, what restrictions and permissions they have.
- Build your relationships with distributors in such a way that they clearly understand how they can use your brand online. You should not allow them to use your signs to get leads or views. If distributors follow the guidelines, they will commit less violation while preserving your rights.
- You should register multiple web documents to minimise the risk of phishing. Having more than one URL will make it possible to set up redirects and get reliable protection from using TM. This will protect your resources from several popular types of fraud.
- Centralisation of brand protection brings positive results. Establish a centre from where the processes associated with the search for violations of your copyrights will be managed and monitored. Be sure to keep statistics and save data so that in the future you can analyse the results and draw corresponding conclusions. The process must be continuous, since only in this case can we talk about the accuracy of the results.
- Try to find the root of the abuse. It may seem to you that the search for violations and their elimination does not bring results, but this is not the case. Protective work should be assessed at a long distance, only then it will be clear that the elimination of violations has a positive effect on the safety of TM.
- Monitoring should be carried out in search engines, on trading platforms, on social media, in mobile applications, on domains and websites using various GEO. For this purpose, special software may be used, which we will discuss further. The more intensively you search, the more likely you are to find a violation. Fraud and dishonest play are possible even within the affiliate program, do not forget about it.
About BluePear
Large companies need round-the-clock continuous protection from brand bidding, and specialised services like BluePear can help with this. The system finds third-party ads and records data: name, ID, domain, and also takes screenshots. This evidence will be needed if a lawsuit against a copyright infringer begins. You can view the reports in your personal account. It is easy to start cooperation: register on the website, subscribe and set the parameters in your personal account. Next, you need to wait for BluePear to collect statistics for you. It is recommended to review the monitoring results in a few days. The reports can be viewed on the website, received in PDF format or sent to your e-mail.
Conclusion
We have reviewed a full list of tips to help enhance the security of your brand. In some cases, self-protection does not bring significant results, then it is better to contact pro companies, for example, BluePear. There you can try the trial version for free. You are able to find convenient tools on the site. The functionality of the platform is suitable even for large companies. At the same time, site navigation is intuitive. If you follow the regulations of the list provided by us, you will be able to achieve a higher level of security for your brand. At the same time, do not forget that only professional software can help you get full protection.
