Brand impersonation and IP infringement: the solution The Wall Street Journal highlighted

In this post, we’ve excerpted part of a Wall Street Journal article. You can read the original article here.

Fast-rising brands are no longer safe.

IP infringement is no longer just a problem for global brands. Many growing small brands are now having their identities stolen, and it’s threatening their very survival.

For a long time, IP infringement was mostly associated with counterfeits of famous global brands. In recent years, though, bad actors have increasingly targeted fast-rising brands. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, MarqVision explained through the case of Darn Tough how fast-rising brands can deal with this threat.

Darn Tough is known for high-quality outdoor socks. Yet even this relatively well-known small brand became a target for bad actors. Countless small brands are unprotected and could become the next target at any time.

In this post, we look at why fast-rising brands have become a major new target for bad actors, the threat Darn Tough faced, and how MarqVision protects small brands.

Why growing small brands become targets

Why are small brands so exposed to bad actors? Famous brands have huge customer bases, so why do bad actors go after smaller companies?

Because fast-rising brands are still weak on brand protection. Large companies have long recognized the importance of brand protection and invested in automated solutions. They understand counterfeiters’ tactics and fight back aggressively with legal action, including raids on offline factories, asset claims and bank account freezes.

Fast-rising brands, on the other hand, often don’t know how to respond to IP infringement. Many don’t put a brand IP protection strategy in place when they start the business, so when a problem actually arises, they’re at a loss.

On top of that, brand protection is often handled not by experienced brand protection specialists but by in-house legal teams and counsel with general legal knowledge.

IP infringement against Darn Tough: impersonator websites

The Darn Tough case shows how sophisticated bad actors’ tactics are becoming, and why they choose the targets they do.

Bad actors stole Darn Tough’s brand imagery and copy to build fake websites that looked very much like the official site. They used URLs similar to the official one to deceive shoppers and promoted the fake sites aggressively through online ads, to the point where they outearned Darn Tough’s real online revenue.

They added fake discounts to Darn Tough’s ads and ran them across multiple digital platforms to fool shoppers.

They didn’t stop at one fake site. They kept creating new fake websites and accounts. Take one down and another popped up, in an endless cycle. Shoppers’ confusion and complaints landed on the real Darn Tough, and the brand’s reputation took a serious hit.

“Half of my day, five days a week was spent tracking down these websites, taking down these websites,” said Ryan Dahlstrom, Global Director of Digital Commerce, highlighting the immense frustration of impersonator websites appearing over and over.

How MarqVision protected Darn Tough from impersonation

To find a solution that could effectively stop the endless stream of impersonator websites, Darn Tough chose MarqVision.

MarqVision’s AI-powered platform detected and categorized every impersonator website targeting Darn Tough. Its automated system efficiently identified brand threats online and collected evidence of IP infringement. All of this data could be stored and reviewed directly in Darn Tough’s dashboard.

One major challenge was that many impersonator sites could only be reached through digital ads. But MarqVision’s specialized technology could find even these hidden fake sites, and Darn Tough saw that no matter how clever the bad actors’ tactics, they had nowhere to hide.

A brand protection strategy for new threats like impersonation

Repeating the old playbook is no longer enough to protect brands from bad actors. No matter how fast new impersonator websites appear, MarqVision is ready to detect IP infringement against a brand and take legal action.

With MarqVision, fast-rising brands like Darn Tough can protect themselves online and focus on growing the business and delivering high-quality products to their customers.

Request a free consultation with MarqVision today to protect your brand from impersonator websites and restore trust.