Many brand owners and IP enforcement agencies have been registering criminal cases against the violators across India with a very short term objective of pushing the sales in a particular territory or achieving some numbers of seizures values, for staying relevant within the organization.

There is no serious planning for getting the registered criminal cases to progress well. The commercial contractual terms for the payments to complainant & witnesses including that of the out of pocket expenses like travel, boarding, lodging etc, are also not planned & budgeted. The obligations of the court and the criminal justice procedure many times are not taken seriously by the IP enforcement agencies or the brand owners, which many times have led to the situations wherein, courts have taken very serious adverse views for the complaints filed and cases registered. There have been times when non-billable warrants are issued on complainants/witnesses or the executives of the brand owners.

Many times organizations also don’t maintain the records of the filed cases and their progress and are hit by surprises, later during the trail of the criminal cases.

There is a need to have a very clear planning for the criminal cases filed and the way they need to be progressed, even if the brand owner does not have a serious intent to get the culprits prosecuted/ sentenced/or fined. Also all the cases need to be followed up for any potential liability to the organization, its employees and associates.

www.brandsandfakes.com platform allows the brand owners and the service providers to capture and track all the cases and ensure that complete transparency & details are maintained on the progress of each matter. The players of Brands & Fakes network allow the complainants & witnesses to be the locals from the place of action, to facilitate the easy handling of future activities.