Brand Monitoring & Online Enforcement

The question

A brand that sells gets copied. Counterfeits turn up on marketplaces. A lookalike webshop harvests your customers' log-in details. Someone on social media sells products you never made, under your name and logo. Usually you find out when a customer complains.

The questions we get are practical. Where is my brand being misused? Which cases are worth acting on, and which are a harmless distributor or fan page? Once I know, who do I write to, and with what proof?

Often a customer or sales partner has just reported a fake webshop. Or a marketplace listing is selling goods under your name at a price you could never match. Sometimes a launch is coming and you want its first weeks covered. And sometimes a takedown worked for a week, and the seller is back under another name.

Our approach

We start from your rights. Before monitoring begins, we check which trademarks and domain names you hold, in which countries, for which goods and services. Every enforcement route depends on them, so gaps show up here. A mark that is not registered in a market where you sell, for instance.

Then monitoring runs continuously, through our online brand monitoring. It finds lookalike domain names from several independent sources and scores them for similarity and typos. It recognises cloned sites and copycat sites that belong to the same campaign. It also follows the large marketplaces and more than twenty social platforms. Results are grouped in five channels (marketplaces, social media, websites, domain names, app stores) and appear in the client portal.

An attorney reviews everything the system flags. That is where the judgement lies. Is this seller authorised? Is the use really infringing under the EU trade mark rules? Can a reseller rely on exhaustion of rights? What response is proportionate? You see each detection and tell us to act, investigate or dismiss.

When action is needed, our takedown workflow prepares the notice for the marketplace, registrar, host or platform, backed by a timestamped evidence pack. Only an attorney sends it. Counterfeits, lookalike shops and infringing listings are usually taken down within one working day. If a notice does not do the job, the same file supports a cease-and-desist letter, a UDRP or URS complaint for a domain name, or court proceedings.

Each detection in the portal shows what was found, when, where, and the evidence captured. Your instruction is recorded with it, so the attorney knows what you decided and why. When the same seller comes back under a new name, the link to earlier detections shows a pattern, not a fresh case. That changes the response. A repeat infringer justifies a firmer letter, or a complaint to the platform about repeated infringement.

What you get

• An up-to-date picture, per channel, of how your brand is used and misused online, in the client portal.
• A prioritised list of detections, each reviewed by an attorney, with a recommendation.
• Notices and letters in English, Dutch, French or German, sent by us on your instruction.
• For domain names, a complaint built on the evidence already gathered.
• Periodic reports on what was found, what was done and what is still open. They also document your enforcement record.

We cannot promise that a platform removes every listing, or that a domain will be transferred. Platforms apply their own rules, and a notice that is incomplete, or aimed at a lawful reseller, can backfire. What we do promise is that the right case goes down the right route, with the right proof.

Next step

Send us your list of trademarks and domain names, and the markets that matter most. We will tell you what monitoring would cover, and where the first gaps are.

Schedule a meeting or contact us.