BrandProtect Automates Brand Cease and Desist Enforcement and Workflow

Allows IP Counsel to Concentrate on the Core, Not the Chore


CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwire - August 17, 2010) -  BrandProtect, the leader in internet threat management, today announced the availability of its Automated Brand Cease and Desist enforcement workflow system. Automated Brand Cease and Desist (ABC+D) enforcement workflow is the newest addition to BrandProtect's suite of brand protection services that help organizations gain control over how they are represented online by uncovering and mitigating the threats that put their rights, revenue and reputation at risk.

BrandProtect's brand abuse and identity theft feeds combined with the Automated Brand Cease and Desist enforcement workflow gives corporate IP attorneys, chief reputation officers and CFOs a cost effective means to monitor, prioritize, manage and enforce global cease and desist actions.

The service scans the Internet and identifies brand and trademark abuses. Human analysts (tagging) then presents only the most important and actionable brand or mark infringements so that legal resources are then able to review and prioritize without being overloaded. A three-stage cease and desist campaign then automates the tedious workflow and paper trail required to take down the offenders.

"While it is possible for companies to manually monitor and execute cease and desist campaigns, the manual process makes consistent enforcement incredibly expensive," said Michael Kiefer, general manager of BrandProtect. "Thanks to social media, for brand owners, the number of threats and abuses has increased exponentially over the past few years. For that reason BrandProtect's global monitoring, human tagging and analyst reviewed infractions are presented to the client in an easy to use workflow. With the push of a button, an automated cease and desist workflow system identifies, prioritizes and automates the entire process and shuts down the bad guys." 

According to Kiefer, many brand and trademark infractions are committed by unauthorized resellers, dealers and agents who advertise one brand of product then switch the consumer at the point of sale to a competitive product or black market look-a-like. These infractions bear a serious and hidden cost to organizations.

Many legal departments are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of Internet IP infringements and are forced to pursue only the most blatant abuses. BrandProtect's ABC+D offers a unique workflow solution aimed at mitigating the rising cost of enforcement (using human tagging to reduce false positives) without compromising on quality of output. Corporate legal departments facing shrinking enforcement budgets and law firms managing clients' IP portfolios (and cost sensitivities) will be able to effectively manage more enforcement actions without increasing workload.

"When trademark offenses are blatant, they are easy to identify and manage. However, in-house legal teams are often tasked with an extraordinary number of projects," said Kiefer. "Enforcement of the small offenses often falls to the wayside. ABC+D couples actionable intelligence, robust workflow and relationships with international law enforcement and more than 4,500 global Internet Service Providers so that take-downs happen quickly. Our goal is to make Internet IP enforcement as easy and automated as possible so that IP counsel can concentrate on the core, not the chore!"

For more information about BrandProtect's Automated Brand Cease and Desist workflow, please visit www.brandprotect.com or call 224-766-3000 for additional information.

ABOUT BRANDPROTECT

As the leader in protecting brands online, BrandProtect empowers organizations to gain control over how they are represented on the Web by uncovering and mitigating the issues that put their reputation at risk and erode customer trust. BrandProtect's Response Services help detect, uncover and mitigate brand and trademark infringement issues, phishing attacks, web traffic diversions, website integrity issues and defamatory discussions. BrandProtect was the first company of its kind to be offered full membership by the Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST). It also has relationships with more than 4,000 Internet Service Providers globally, accounting for more than 90 percent of the traffic flowing across the Internet. For more information visit: www.brandprotect.com