When talking about digital brand abuse, what exactly does that entail? And how can brands formulate strategies for digital brand protection? We’ll explain in this article.
Digital Brand Abuse
Digital brand abuse can having lasting negative effects on a brand and exists in various forms, including scam websites, social media fraud, and copyright infringement.
Scam Websites
Scam websites are websites that are created for financial gain, or in some cases, malicious purposes. They often bear similarities to the websites of authentic brands in order to redirect traffic and acquire sensitive user information. There are different variations of scam websites to watch out for:
Phishing Sites: Websites that mimic the look of legitimate ones, such as banks or shopping platforms, to trick users into providing personal information such as credit card numbers and email addresses. Often the products or services offered on these sites are counterfeit, or simply never delivered.
Cybersquatting: This refers to the practice of claiming domain names, usually very soon after they expire, under the trademark of an existing brand. These websites are either sold back to the original trademark holder, used to sell other products and services, or abused for malicious purposes.
Typo Squatting: Sometimes new domain names are registered that are incredibly similar to those of existing brands, with only a typo or spelling error to set them apart. Similar to the ones mentioned above, this is also a method of generating website traffic to sell products or services.
Social Media Impersonation
Social media presence is incredibly important for modern brands. This is both because it allows brands to expand upon their brand image and reach wider audiences, and also because it allows brands to have access to two-way communication with consumers.
It’s because of this importance, that Twitter originally requested authentication from companies to be qualified for Twitter Blue. That has since changed, unfortunately making it much easier for a brand account to be impersonated.
A famous example happened to Eli Lilly and Co., the pharmaceutical giant in 2022. An impersonated account with a blue check mark sent a tweet that said, “We are excited to announce insulin is now free,“which became viral. Although the real Eli Lilly account asked for the tweet to be taken down, Twitter didn’t react until hours later. The next day, Eli Lilly’s stock price fell by 4.37%, wiping billions of dollars off of company value, and also sparking heated discussions over the need to control the brand’s exuberant drug prices.
Copyright Infringement
Copyright infringement occurs when protected works such as texts, images, music, or software are used without the permission of the copyright owner. Other than the obvious matter of financial loss, copyright infringement can also have long lasting negative impacts on brand perception. In cases where financial and reputation loss is severe, legal resource becomes necessary. Recently, there have been two high profile cases of copyright infringement involving Lego and OpenAI.
Lego v. Lepin: A recent example of copyright infringement is from 2020. Lego filed a lawsuit against a toy manufacture Lepin for producing and selling knockoff versions of its building blocks and sets, and accused Lepin of not only copying the design of individual bricks but also entire sets, including packaging and branding. They claimed that this infringed on Lego’s copyrights and trademarks. Ultimately the court ordered Lepin to cease production and to pay substantial damages to Lego.
Julian Sancton v. OpenAI: As usage of AI becomes more and more widespread, there are also several ongoing copyright infringement lawsuits filed against AI and tech companies. The most recent case is a class-action lawsuit involving multiple Pulitzer Prize winning authors against Microsoft and OpenAI in 2023. The two companies were accused of using the authors’ copyrighted works to train AI models without permission, a blatant violation of copyright laws.
Strategies for Digital Brand Protection
Now that we have discussed the different forms of digital brand abuse, let’s discuss what we can do to limit them. As a brand, it’s crucial to set in place both proactive and reactive strategies for digital brand protection. Here we’ll introduce three important aspects in mitigating digital brand abuse and enforcing digital brand protection.
Trademark and Copyright Protection
Trademark Protection: At the start of your business, it’s important to register your trademarks to establish legal ownership and prevent unauthorized use. This includes not just the brand name, but also logos, slogans, and any distinctive elements associated with your brand. This gives you legal standing to deal with potential matters of trademark abuse down the line, whether that be in the form of scam websites or social media impersonation.
However, trademarking is not a one and done deal. Depending on your region, it’s necessary to renew trademarks after a period of time to maintain their protection. Missing renewal deadlines can result in loss of trademark rights, leaving your brand vulnerable to digital brand abuse.
Copyright Protection: As with trademark protection, in order to protect your brand’s contents, images, videos, and software, it’s necessary to register these works with the appropriate copyright offices. Registration provides legal evidence of ownership and is a prerequisite for filing infringement lawsuits in many jurisdictions.
Brand Monitoring
It’s necessary to have a cohesive understanding of the online environment and potential forms of brand abuse in order to better form a defensive response, whether that be issuing cease and desist letters or in serious cases, filing lawsuits against copyright infringers. This includes keeping an eye on the state of your brand’s domains, social media accounts, and ad presence.
Domain Usage: Protecting your brand’s domain usage is essential in preventing phishing attacks, cybersquatting, and unauthorized online activity that can harm your brand’s reputation. Some methods of doing so includes registering multiple variations and extensions of your primary domain name, which can preemptively block bad actors from exploiting your brand. Additionally, using domain monitoring services can help you keep track of newly registered domains that mimic or closely resemble your own. These services alert you when there are potential threats. This allows brands to take immediate action, such as filing domain disputes through the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP).Consistently monitoring your domains ensures that consumers can reliably find and interact with your brand online without encountering fraudulent sites that could damage your brand’s reputation.
Social Media: Social media platforms are powerful tools for brand engagement but also potential hotspots for brand misuse. This means that in addition to websites, social media also requires consistent monitoring. This involves tracking mentions, hashtags, and discussions related to your brand across various platforms.Being vigilant helps with identifying fake accounts, unauthorized promotions, and negative publicity early on. If you are able to engage with the audience effectively and address issues in time in response to these forms of brand abuse, then mitigating the negative impacts becomes much easier.
Ads: Monitoring ads is a crucial component of digital brand protection, not only in terms of your brand’s own promotional material, but also outside advertising. This is to ensure that unauthorized parties are not misusing your brand’s identity or IP in their advertising campaigns. By utilizing ad monitoring tools like Google Alerts and SEMrush, you can track where and how your brand is being mentioned across various advertising platforms.Regular ad monitoring not only safeguards your brand but also ensures that your marketing messages remain consistent and credible in the eyes of consumers. Adopting a proactive approach like this can help you identify potential trademark infringements, misleading advertisements, or unauthorized associations with your brand.
IP Enforcement
As with other types of digital brand abuse, copyright infringement is difficult to detect and defend, however large video and text sharing platforms serves as an effective defense mechanism against copyright infringement.
For example, YouTube’s copyright policies are designed to protect brand IPs and copyrighted material. The platform utilizes algorithms and Content ID systems to detect and remove videos with unauthorized use of copyrighted materials. We sometimes hear stories about YouTube’s stringent copyright related enforcement, such as shutting down a YouTuber’s channel because they had used a copyrighted song.
However, videos, songs, and articles can still be circulated on more fringe areas of the internet where detection methods aren’t as robust, such as file-sharing websites, social media, as well as piracy websites. In situations like this, technological solutions such as watermarking, fingerprinting, and algorithms can be used to effectively identify infringements. This allows brands to issue cease-and-desist letters or file lawsuits if necessary, and ultimately set up a streamlined process for reporting and taking down unauthorized content.
Conclusion
In a world where digital brand abuse can be inconspicuous yet ever present, it can be difficult to make sense of how to protect your brand. Contact us at Brand Cloud if you have concerns of brand abuse and hope to take steps towards strengthening digital brand protection.
