BRAND PROTECTION SERVICES IN INDIA

It is not in doubt that the exclusivity of brands – both Indian as well as the larger international ones, has been diluting in view of the severe acts of infringement in recent years. Particularly in India, the Intellectual Property Rights prevailing in these brands have been severely affected and much detriment has been caused to brand owners in view such resulting from infringements.

Ironically, innovativeness has not just been the forte of brand coiners alone. It has been more religiously practiced by infringers who have been committing such unauthorized and illegal activities by various creative methods such as counterfeiting, tampering, pilfering, etc. Every brand in every field and in every industry faces a different type of infringement and every time, such methods gets newer and worse.

Obviously, such widespread infringements have led brand owners to take aggressive steps and out of the box measures to counter such infringement. Considering that a brand is the most valuable asset of a company, brand protection has become an integral part of managing a business and safeguarding its assets.

Over the last few years in India, innumerable discussions have been undertaken by stake holders involved in the protection of IPR and IPR Compliance, to better understand and deal with the losses faced by brand owners, due to the reckless levels of infringement. All such discussions and thought processes have arrived at only one result – BRAND PROTECTION SERVICES.

While owners of large brands and companies have their own in-house agencies and departments who are involved in these Brand Protection Services, other relatively smaller and mid-sized companies prefer to engage expert organizations in order to avail brand protection services in India in relation to their respective businesses.

On that note, the interesting phenomenon which has surfaced in recent times is the various entities and individuals who have started providing Brand Protection Services in India as well as other ancillary IPR Management Services of procurement and protection of trademarks and other IPR.

These entities which offer brand protection services in India have their own team of experts and provide an end-to-end solution to the brand owners. Such convenience, from these entities, has been enthusiastically welcomed by brand owners, who are otherwise riddled with the usual perils of finding experts for various individual activities such as conducting investigations, identifying infringers, assessing the genuineness of information, taking legal action, etc.

While these entities providing brand protection services assist in safeguarding brand owners from infringements, they need to adopt a holistic approach towards such brand protection which approach is an intrinsic and integral part of brand protection services. These entities, along with their team of experts, should conduct consistent analysis to understand and adopt the ever-changing trends in Brand Risk Management since the same needs to be provided differently to different situations and different markets. They should then come forth with a customized and an integrated risk management system in order to tackle problems effectively and swiftly. Needless to say, all such entities providing brand protection services should not forget to equip themselves with technology which, in today’s world, is no more a luxury, but a necessity. And while tackling problems such as infringement, the help of technology goes a long way in providing effective brand protection services in India.

Brand protection services in India have been taken up as a serious agenda by all brand owners and they have been consistently finding out newer and effective methods to deal with the reckless acts of infringement. Companies have started to create a separate department which deals exclusively with brand protection and a specific budget for such activities have been created by these companies. Adding to such seriousness are the aforesaid independent entities which exclusively provide brand protection services in India and together, we can only hope that the ever increasing graph of infringing activities slows down, stops and starts falling down.