In the modern world, there’s many things that need to be protected. One of these is a person’s intellectual property. More than ever before, it seems like people online are simply stealing intellectual property and re-using it on their own webpages in an effort to make money and drive traffic. As this continues, it’s time for brand protection. Simply put, brand protection is about keeping third parties from stealing and using intellectual property without permission. Permission is what’s important, as there are often cases where a brand will want to partner with differing sources to put their brand out in an agreed upon manner. This is where brand protection software comes into play. This software can help ensure that people aren’t suffering from trademark infringement or other sources of intellectual property theft. Thankfully, there are a wide variety of software offerings available to do just that.
How Does Brand Protection Software Work?
Typically there are four parts to a good piece of brand software. The first is going to be detection. Software needs to be able to detect if a brand is being damaged. This could be through intellectual property being used, or even if it’s counterfeit goods that are being used. The second step is validation, this is where each item that’s been detected will undergo an additional stage of verification. It’s entirely possible that accidental situations can arise and legitimate companies may be accidentally infringing on a brand. Verification helps show intent. The next step in the process is going to be execution of the software. Brand protection will take some steps to stop infringement. The software can recommend a lot of actions that should be taken against people. Typically removing items from websites or e-stores is a start. In some cases, with legal intervention, brand protection can result in factories closing or product shipments being blocked. Finally, brand protection software is great for reporting and analytics. The software can examine a brand’s current setup and determine if it’s likely to be abused or stolen by others.
Techniques Used in Brand Protection Software
There’s several methods in which brand protection works to protect a company. These are admittedly only some of the ways in which brand protection works. Some of the best methods include:
- Image Recognition - This is a part of software which can dig through image after image online and pick out ones which might have been stolen. While picking out identical images is easy, there’s actually other techniques as well. Object recognition is on the other half of the complexity spectrum. It can pick out individual objects anywhere in an image or video. This is really interesting for companies which may have had some of their products copied or stolen and then used in marketing materials.
- Keyword Checking - A lot of the time, when counterfeit products are sold online to people, the keywords that they use are identical or even include the original company’s name. Keyword monitoring starts with continuous monitoring of well known high risk websites which often carry counterfeit merchandise.
- Artificial Intelligence - The explosion of artificial intelligence lately has come from a basic understanding of how machine learning now works. However, this common acceptance doesn’t mean AI wasn’t being used already in a number of ways. AI can analyze and correlate data to determine better ways to search for things. AI is used to enhance the tools mentioned earlier like image recognition and keyword checking.
Conclusion
There isn’t a company or brand on earth which wants their property to be stolen. Whether it’s counterfeit copies of their product, or if it’s intellectual property, it deserves to be safe and protected. Brand protection services and brand protection software offers an important method to ensure that a company can keep their items safe.