Today counterfeiting has become one of the biggest problems for business owners. Counterfeiting is damaging the brand’s reputation and evaporating the customers’ trust. In the age of the internet, replication of original products has become even more convenient for infringers. Businesses are witnessing massive losses and attrition due to counterfeiting of their products across the world.
You cannot undermine the counterfeiters because they are not small shops, but large-scale manufacturers, with the capacity to produce the bulk of fake products. In this article, we will talk about 5 ways to protect your product from counterfeiting.
What is Counterfieting?
It refers to creating an unauthorized replica of a real product that is sold under the trademark of the legitimate and established brand, without authorization from its owner. Such products are made of substandard quality that does not match the specifics of the original product. Whether it is automotive parts, healthcare products, prescription drugs, or electronics parts, every sector has been rattled by the massive influx of counterfeit products.
Let us have a look at 5 ways to protect your product from counterfeiting.
Secure Global Intellectual Property Rights
To prevent counterfeiting of your products, the first step you need to take is to secure a patent, copyright, or trademark for your product. It gives exclusive legal rights to you and your authorized partners to produce that product. This gives you litigation power to bar unauthorized manufacturers from replicating your products and demand compensation. Since global counterfeiting has increased rampantly, you need to ensure that your product is also registered in markets or countries where you have a business and has a higher chance of counterfeiting your products.
Litigation
Possing IP rights for your product gives you legal authority to opt to court in case of counterfeiting of your product. Lawsuits can be filed against the offenders in the respective jurisdiction to stop counterfeiting of your product and recover losses. It is a powerful tool to protect your brand’s reputation and prevent sales losses.
However, you have to access the benefits and risks of filing a court case, for it requires enough evidence to prove that the offender has misled your customers by circulating fake copies of your product. If you win the case you can ask for compensation for monetary damage. Although it is a potent tool against infringers, it is time-consuming and expensive.
Introduce Novel Technology
The bulk movement of inventory requires the involvement of many third-party firms at various stages, which makes it an uphill task for manufacturers to manually keep track of the supply chain at every stage and geographical location. This makes use of technology imperative for the manufacturers to monitor and track counterfeiting. Over the period of time, the technology has evolved enough to equip the manufacturers to authenticate original products and uncover fake ones using a smartphone scanner. They can use unique patterns, nano-optics images, or QR codes on product labels to differentiate the original one.
Blockchi
The cutting-edge technology used by Blockchi enabled the manufacturer to keep track of every transaction at every stage through a digitally distributed ledger. It uses an NFT-enabled blockchain technology that affixes unique QR codes on your product’s packaging which helps in verifying the authenticity of your products by scanning through a smartphone camera and also detecting the duplicate ones. You can stop anti-counterfeiting by Blokchi which creates a unique and tamper-proof QR code for each label that cannot go undetected if replicated. It also makes it easy for the customers to verify your product’s authenticity by scanning the QR code through their mobile phones.
medSure
Pharma is one of the highly affected sectors by counterfeiting. The medicines are counterfeited by substituting the with ordinary salt or some harmful substance that can cause serious illness to the patients. Many times expired medicines are counterfeited with a new label, which is extremely disastrous for patents and also puts the manufacturer under the regulatory’s scanner. We have seen such incidence during COVID19 not only in India but across the developed world.
Based on blockchain technology, medSure has come up with an end-to-end track and trace solution to help the pharma manufacturers counter the counterfeiting of medicines. It involves incorporating NFT-enabled unique and inimitable QR codes on every level of the product’s packaging to authenticate the original product and catch the fake one at any stage of the supply cycle.
Conclusion
The counterfeiters are exploring new ways to create fake products day and night, as such business owners need to be extra vigilant against counterfeiting to minimize their losses and ensure the growth of their enterprises. As we conclude the article, we hope that the above-mentioned 5 ways to protect your product from counterfeiting must help you in taking your business to the next level.
