How to protect corporate brands

A brand is a distinctive mark used by producers and operators to identify their products, distinguish them from competitors, and identify consumers. A brand can be a name, a term, a sign, a symbol or a design, or a combination of the above factors. So how should corporate brands be protected? Let’s take a look!

Brand protection must start from the source

A very important point in brand protection lies in its source - within the company . It is difficult to create a license and even harder to maintain it. Brand protection requires a protracted battle. Only when we regard quality as our life and seek development through innovation can we create and protect our brand. For pharmaceutical companies, producing and supplying unique, high-quality products in strict accordance with national GMP standards is the fundamental means to protect their brands. Only if an enterprise adheres to the concept of quality first from beginning to end and puts improving product quality at the top of all its work can it ensure the market share of its products and achieve the purpose of brand protection in a virtuous cycle. At the same time, product quality is also time-sensitive. As time goes by, people will put forward new requirements for product quality. Therefore, quality control cannot be achieved once and for all. We must work hard to continuously improve and have the awareness and ability to continuously innovate.

Protect your trademark from being infringed by others

Internationally, trademarks are recognized as the most important intellectual property rights, especially famous brand trademarks. Multinational companies and many well-known enterprises regard famous brands and trademarks as "national treasures" and take all possible means to protect them. However, Chinese enterprises do not pay enough attention to brand trademarks. As a result, some brands in my country that have been established after decades or even hundreds of years of unremitting efforts have been registered or counterfeited. At present, most countries implement the principle of "first to register". The first to register has the trademark rights of the trademark and is protected by the laws of that country. According to statistics from the State Intellectual Property Office, by the end of 2005, the total number of registered trademarks in my country had reached 2.499 million, of which the total number of foreign registered trademarks in China reached 443,000, accounting for 17.7% of the total number of registered trademarks. However, among the more than 7.8 million large and small enterprises in the country, only 40% have their own trademarks. Precisely because of the weak awareness of trademark protection, the famous trademarks of many domestic brand-name products have become coveted and plundered by some foreign individuals with bad intentions. According to reports, trademarks such as "Tongrentang", "Shanghai Hero", "Hongtashan", and "White Rabbit" have been registered with varying degrees of malicious intent abroad.

So how do you protect your name from squatting and infringement? First of all, you must have a sense of the overall situation and be forward-looking. It is necessary to consider the sales area of ??the product after the company expands, the direction of the product in five or ten years, the countries where it may be sold, etc. When registering a brand, enterprises must adhere to the principle of geographical radiation, that is, the brand registration area must be broad, and they should consider registering in multiple countries and regions that may become potential market areas to obtain local legal protection. Secondly, a specialized agency should be set up within the enterprise to be responsible for trademark registration and management, and to establish trademark files. Third, for brands that want to enter the international market, they need to entrust a professional trademark firm to conduct global monitoring. Overseas registration of trademarks should attract great attention from Chinese enterprises, and trademark registration should be incorporated into the overall development strategy of the entire enterprise, and efforts should be made to improve awareness of international trademark registration and self-protection. Fourth, register the same trademark in relevant fields in advance to leave room for future brand extension. Pharmaceutical companies that intend to expand into the cosmeceutical or daily chemical market should register trademarks in the corresponding product categories in advance. Otherwise, the trademark may be maliciously registered by other companies, which not only sets up obstacles for brand extension but may also jeopardize your brand due to the bad management of other companies. Finally, when you discover that someone else has maliciously registered a trademark, you should promptly file an objection with the Trademark Office or apply to cancel its trademark registration.

Use high-tech and patents to protect brands

In order to make products more difficult to imitate, anti-counterfeiting technologies with high technological content should be applied to special markings on products such as packaging materials and labels, such as Laser holographic image anti-counterfeiting, fluorescent phosphorescence anti-counterfeiting, metal invisible anti-counterfeiting, special sample preparation and printing anti-counterfeiting, etc. If the product is easy to counterfeit, many people will try it; but if the product is difficult to counterfeit, they will choose other ways to make profits. To this end, companies should develop and apply professional anti-counterfeiting technologies in brand design. Although these methods treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, they are effective in protecting the rights and interests of brands and consumers. At the same time, we must also pay attention to the uniqueness of the brand, which is an important measure to protect the brand during design. A brand design with strong uniqueness is easier to cooperate with the law and obtain good protection than a brand with no uniqueness or poor uniqueness.

In addition, companies should actively apply for product packaging design patents within the framework of the overall VI design, unify logos and styles, and effectively ensure the uniqueness of product packaging design.

Proactively fight against counterfeiting and safeguard rights

In order to effectively combat counterfeiting, enterprises must cooperate with industrial and commercial bureaus and technical supervision units across the country to crack down on counterfeiting, and organize anti-counterfeiting personnel to go to various places for implementation. Anti-counterfeiting measures should be in place on products and packaging, and there should be a password method for consumers to call to check the authenticity, so that merchants selling fake products have no way to hide.

However, in the process of proactively combating counterfeiting and safeguarding rights, we should also pay attention to communication with consumers. Excessive publicity on anti-counterfeiting and rights protection may cause consumers to shift their purchases to other alternative brands out of fear of buying fakes. If the phenomenon of counterfeiting is not very serious, control or containment is an effective strategy. Spending less money can communicate to society that a company is protecting its products and reassuring consumers. If the phenomenon of counterfeiting is already very serious, then the company must take more advanced and severe measures to stop counterfeiters, regard them as market destroyers, and do everything possible to eliminate them.

During brand extension, we should also pay attention to the protection of the brand.

In order to make full use of the brand and realize the leap-forward development of the enterprise, we should have a scientific attitude and superb wisdom. Plan brand extension strategies and make full use of the intangible assets of brand resources through rational brand extension and expansion. Implementing brand extension can leverage the influence of the parent brand to significantly reduce the promotional costs during the product introduction period. Consumers will transfer their trust in the original product to the new product intentionally or unintentionally. Every time a brand adds a new product, it will inevitably add a new type of user group, giving customers one more brand experience and association, and increasing the opportunity for brand communication. At the same time, the original customer resources, channels, research and development, and procurement advantages can be borrowed. Consumers are psychologically dependent on their favorite brand, Aiwujiwu, and preferentially use multiple products of their favorite brands in their lives.

Of course, using the same brand for multiple products has many advantages, but there are also hidden dangers of involvement. Therefore, you should choose excellent products to use the brand, and do a good job in brand management to prevent? A pot full of fishy fish? For example, Tsingtao Beer's sub-brand expansion strategy is worth learning from. Tsingtao Beer has acquired many beer companies across the country and uniformly adopted the "Tsingtao Beer local brand" strategy in brand use. This not only leverages the Tsingtao Beer brand, but also prevents future Local brands damage Tsingtao Beer and set up a line of defense. ;