When scammers impersonate your products online, it’s a heartbreaking conundrum for honest businesses. Cybercriminals steal your IP, sell counterfeits of your products on digital marketplaces, and even setup fake shops on deceptive domains. If you own the rights to your products and services, that should be enough to remove online infringements, right? Unfortunately, it’s rarely that simple in the world of takedowns, as we’ll explore below.
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.
