IACC: Finding your pack
Over a century ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote that “the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack”. More than 40 years ago, the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) began assembling its own pack, with the help of like-minded IP owners.
Although they may be competitors in their respective industries, the members of the IACC—and rights holders more generally—have common interests that bind them together and demand their cooperation.
However, many brands fail to recognise this fact, or simply feel that they lack the resources or bandwidth necessary to engage in broader collaborative efforts. This is particularly true for small companies and startups that are just starting to build their brand protection programmes.
Companies’ individual limitations, whether in terms of manpower or budget, are precisely the point though: no-one is capable of solving the problem of counterfeiting on their own. But where does
one begin?
Leveraging government resources
Perhaps the single most important—and cost-effective—thing that rights owners can do to expand the reach of their brand protection programmes is to actively engage with their counterparts in
law enforcement.
Customs and police officers can provide additional eyes and ears, and serve as a force multiplier for the identification and interdiction of illicit trafficking at the border or in retail markets. They’re only able to do so, however, if they know what to look for, and who to contact.
"Brands must take a proactive approach to ensure that enforcement agencies have the tools they need."
Brands must take a proactive approach to ensure that enforcement agencies have the tools that they need. This includes developing clear and concise training materials and product identification guides, as well as reaching out regularly to provide intelligence about known bad actors and the tactics they’re using to conceal their activities.
Since its inception, the IACC has focused heavily on law enforcement training. Over the past two decades, we’ve trained more than 45,000 law enforcement officers in the US alone. More recently, we’ve worked with our members and partner organisations to offer similar opportunities for public sector colleagues in Europe and throughout Latin America.
We’ve seen at first hand the positive impact that such programmes can have, and we continue to seek new ways of engaging with law enforcement personnel. The IACC Training App, for example, allows police and customs officers to access brands’ contact information and product guides at the push of a button, 24 hours a day.
Brands’ engagement with government partners shouldn’t be limited to law enforcement. Governments around the world are devoting greater resources to aid rights owners not just to defend their rights in their local market, but also to grow their businesses in international markets, including the acquisition and enforcement of their rights overseas.
The US government has developed an extensive network of IP attachés around the world for such purposes; here in Washington, DC we’ve had the opportunity to work with attachés from China, Japan, Canada, and the UK, among others.
Rights owners who familiarise themselves with, and take advantage of, such assistance available freely from their governments’ departments or ministries of commerce and economic officers in the diplomatic corps, will be far better prepared to face the challenge of protecting their rights in the global marketplace.
Non-traditional partners
While government engagement is an essential component to every company’s brand protection programme, rights owners would be wise to cast a wide net when developing a comprehensive IP enforcement strategy.
The IACC has found this to be particularly true in the e-commerce market. For more than ten years, we’ve been working closely with brands to forge cooperative relationships with partners in the payments, e-commerce platforms, express shipping, and other product sectors.
Such engagement helps to reduce the cost and burden of enforcement for brands and for our partners through the sharing of expertise and intelligence needed to identify illicit traffickers and take lasting action against their operations.
Our IACC RogueBlock Program, developed in cooperation with the world’s largest credit card and payment services companies, has led to the identification and termination of more than 7,000 merchant accounts since its inception and served to de-monetise hundreds of thousands of illicit websites.
The IACC MarketSafe Program, established in 2013 as a collaborative effort with the Alibaba Group, has offered a proof of concept for cross-sector engagement, leading to the takedown of more than half a million listings for counterfeit and pirated goods, and the removal of more than 15,000 sellers of illicit products from Alibaba’s platforms.
We measure our success in other ways too. It’s seen in the adoption of new policies and procedures by our partners to proactively identify and stop bad actors before they’ve had a chance to harm rights owners, in the development of new tools to assist small- and medium-sized enterprises who might not otherwise have the resources to act, and in the pursuit of joint civil and criminal enforcement actions by IP owners and our partners.
Building on the successes of, and lessons learned from, our RogueBlock and IACC MarketSafe programmes, the IACC signed a memorandum of understanding with Amazon two years ago.
Those discussions have led to the development of a streamlined escalation system, the IACC-Amazon Program, which is designed to facilitate rapid response and real-time feedback regarding issues experienced by rights owners seeking assistance through Amazon’s established brand protection tools.
"Your own consumers can act as a huge force multiplier—they are your eyes and ears in the retail market."
Participants are able to highlight counterfeiters’ adaptive strategies for avoiding detection, identify potential gaps in the existing enforcement framework, and inform the platform’s process for developing scalable solutions to address IP violations. It facilitates transparency and the sharing of intelligence between Amazon and participating brands.
The programme has grown since it was launched in 2018—made stronger in large part by integrating participants’ feedback to improve it. Most recently, Amazon is making counterfeit sales volume threshold data available through the programme—a big step in helping brands target the most egregious counterfeiters.
Although much work remains to be done, we’re optimistic that this effort will lead to long-term benefits for rights owners and consumers.
A role for consumers
One final partner that many IP owners overlook when building their brand protection programmes is their own customer base. Your own consumers can act as a huge force multiplier—they are your eyes and ears in the retail market, on e-commerce platforms, and social media.
As in the case of engaging with police and customs officers, there are some relatively simple steps that brands can take to empower their customers to help.
First, make it easy for them. Add some information to your website FAQs to let them know about the risks associated with counterfeit goods, how they can protect themselves against being defrauded by counterfeiters, and how they can let you know about counterfeit sales so that you can protect others.
Perhaps the most important thing is to communicate honestly with customers about why IP is important to your company, and how the sale of counterfeits impacts both you and them.
Help them to understand not only the value of your brand, but also the values of your brand. Explain how IP protection helps you to deliver quality products to them and quality jobs and benefits for your employees, and enables you to contribute to the economy and the community more broadly.
If they’re already your customer, odds are that they already view your brand in a positive light. Build on that goodwill, and encourage them to be a part of your team.
No company, and no country, is capable of solving the problem of counterfeits on its own, but the good news is, none of us has to be. We just need to find ourselves a good pack to run with.
Travis Johnson is vice president of legislative affairs and senior counsel to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition in Washington, DC. He oversees all aspects of the organisation’s government relations and policy development functions for the Americas and is a member of the Florida Bar. He can be contacted at: tjohnson@iacc.org
