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IP and brand value

In my life­time, the role, scope and val­ue of “brand” has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. World rank­ings show brand val­u­a­tions as assets in the bil­lions – these are the most valu­able assets of many busi­ness­es – but it is not just the eco­nom­ic val­ue that has changed. In the mod­ern world brands also car­ry social val­ue. Brands have always car­ried with them the promise of qual­i­ty or con­sis­ten­cy, but now con­sumers expect more – the brand stands for the eth­i­cal, social, envi­ron­men­tal approach of a com­pa­ny and acts as a sort of guardian in rela­tion to this behav­iour.

I have seen an increase in under­stand­ing in cor­po­rates of the impor­tance of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP), but it is rare that brand val­ue is focused on over and above a focus on tech­nol­o­gy. Unlike any piece of tech, the brand has indef­i­nite life, is what allows a busi­ness to stand out in increas­ing­ly crowd­ed mar­kets and encap­su­lates the busi­ness and all it stands for to the con­sumer. And yet it is often not giv­en the atten­tion that its val­ue would sug­gest it demands.

The con­cept of what makes up a brand has also broad­ened. This is no longer sim­ply a name and/or a logo, but a com­bi­na­tion of these things with “look and feel”, brand archi­tec­ture, tone of voice, typog­ra­phy and even “per­son­al­i­ty”, among oth­er things.

Brand own­ers should enforce their rights in order to pre­vent dilu­tion of the brand and ulti­mate­ly retain brand val­ue

For com­pa­nies spe­cial­is­ing in advice on and pro­tec­tion of brands, this devel­op­ment makes the task hard­er. Tra­di­tion­al IP – trade­mark, design, copy­right, con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion – doesn’t map straight on to this mod­ern view of brand and this cre­ates a need for more cre­ative strate­gies. Brand pro­tec­tion is no longer about stan­dard trade­mark pro­tec­tion – think about unusu­al marks (colour, sound, shape, trade dress), design pro­tec­tion, domain strat­e­gy, sup­ply chain man­age­ment, con­trac­tu­al terms with sup­pli­ers, part­ners and licensees, and even enforce­ment activ­i­ty. All of this, and more, goes towards an effec­tive brand pro­tec­tion strat­e­gy.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of access to online mar­ket­places all over the world, use of social media, the abil­i­ty to own and set up web­sites and domains eas­i­ly, and get in front of con­sumers with­out an expen­sive phys­i­cal pres­ence, as well as the inter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of trade, makes it more and more straight­for­ward to mim­ic brands and do things that can divert trade or under­mine brand val­ue.

Research from Mark­Mon­i­tor in 2009 val­ues coun­ter­feit prod­uct online at $133 bil­lion. The issue has grown by orders of mag­ni­tude since then. And it is not just about prod­uct.

Brand own­ers should enforce their rights in order to pre­vent dilu­tion of the brand and ulti­mate­ly retain brand val­ue. How­ev­er, the vol­ume of prob­lems in the mod­ern online world makes this very dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly as tra­di­tion­al legal approach­es to enforce­ment are so expen­sive. This often puts com­pa­nies off from try­ing to deal with the prob­lem. Instead brand own­ers need to be as cre­ative as those run­ning the par­a­sitic busi­ness­es in their efforts to put a stop to their activ­i­ty.

But mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal tools and plat­forms help. Com­pa­nies such as Inco­pro and Yel­low, for exam­ple, make it eas­i­er than ever to mon­i­tor online activ­i­ty prop­er­ly, but the vol­ume of infor­ma­tion makes it dif­fi­cult to pri­ori­tise effec­tive­ly. Stan­dard low-lev­el “take-downs” on mar­ket­places and domain recov­ery tech­niques are cost effec­tive and a good start, but do not address real long-term, under­ly­ing issues.

Julius Stobbs, Stobbs IP

Julius Sto­bbs, Sto­bbs IP

At Sto­bbs we spe­cialise in strate­gic, holis­tic and cost-effec­tive approach­es to brand pro­tec­tion and enforce­ment. This has to start with a cre­ative and com­plete approach to obtain­ing the right sets of rights. Many make the mis­take of pro­tect­ing what is in front of them rather than ask­ing the ques­tion, “What do we want to use these rights for?”

Enforce­ment stan­dard­i­s­a­tion is key to keep­ing costs man­age­able, but it can­not be the only approach. Com­pa­nies should explore the range of options avail­able. Cost-effec­tive com­mer­cial tools and stan­dard take-down tech­niques should be cou­pled with prop­er fil­ter­ing and pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of the infor­ma­tion to work effec­tive­ly. All this needs to be done in close co-oper­a­tion with the mar­ket­ing and pub­lic rela­tions depart­ments.

Com­pa­nies need to recog­nise the growth in impor­tance of brand in the mod­ern world and not be put off by what might seem an appar­ent­ly unman­age­able task. With the right approach, sig­nif­i­cant and cost-effec­tive progress can be made.

Sto­bbs is a new con­sul­tan­cy firm spe­cial­is­ing in all things relat­ing to brand pro­tec­tion, man­age­ment and enforce­ment. Sto­bbs won the 2016 Man­ag­ing Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Award for Best Trade­mark Firm in the UK