Introduction
It’s important to protect your products from people copying them without your permission (counterfeiting) and branding them like your products. Counterfeit products:
Affect profits as consumers buy them instead of your (genuine) product
Can damage the firm’s reputation as counterfeit products are often of inferior quality
May injure consumers because they won’t have undergone safety checks.
Brand protection involves preventing unauthorised use of the brand and preventing any activity which could harm the brand’s reputation.
Intellectual Property
The first step in brand protection is the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property legislation is designed to protect creators (and creation owners) from others unfairly copying their creations. Some creations are automatically protected from copying whilst others require the owner to make a formal application with the relevant authorities. Here is a list of intellectual property protection and examples of creations covered by each type of protection.
Brand Protection Through Product Authentication
Some firms will add features to their products to help verify whether a product is a genuine product made by the manufacturer. Product authentication can be through tags on the product’s packaging or tags inside the product itself. Packaging authentication includes QR codes which can be scanned for verification whilst tags may be added to food products, pharmaceutical products and fuel to test whether the product is from the manufacturer and/or whether anybody has tampered with it.
Brand Protection Through Measurement and Testing
Firms practising brand protection will ensure their products can be traced and identified through each stage of the supply chain. Barcodes, unique product numbers and product authenticity tags (mentioned in part 1) help firms trace each of their products through every stage of the manufacturing and supply chain process. Product identification methods allow firms to remove fake products, identify vulnerable areas in the supply chain and prevent future recurrences.
Brand Protection Through Product Licensing and Royalties
To maximise a brand’s potential, brand owners may grant others permission to use their brand through a product licence. For example The Walt Disney Company licence (grant permission ) third parties to use their branded creations (e.g. characters from the film Frozen, Winnie the Pooh, or Mickey Mouse) on a range of merchandise.
Disney grant so many licenses that they have a specific part of the company (Disney Consumer Products http://www.disneyconsumerproducts.com ) responsible for license management.
Product licences allow brand owners to extend their brand through third parties in a controlled manner. Product licenses stipulate who will use the brand, how the brand will be used, where it will be used, and for how long. In addition to extending and protecting brands, licenses also generate extra revenue for brand owners through fees and royalties.
Continue
Continue onto page 2 for further information about brand protection through supply chain management, production line management, specialist firms and government agencies .