Proxies for Intellectual Property Protection

Today, it has become every business’s responsibility to protect its assets, both tangible and intangible. And while the physical properties are more comfortable to secure and protect, the intellectual ones are a little more complicated to safeguard.

And because organisations spend a lot of time and resources trying to create intangible properties and derive permanent gains from them once they have them, one would, naturally, expect the organisations to treat the safety of such properties as a high priority.

However, while some companies try to protect these assets, others generally ignore this aspect until the infringers strike, usually via the internet. The same internet, which makes it more likely for infringers to steal your intellectual assets, must then become the number one tool you employ in your company’s intellectual property protection.

Even at that, the job of monitoring and securing your intellectual property is usually laced with challenges and complications.

What is Intellectual Property (IP)

Intellectual property includes products such as ideas, concepts, names, symbols, images, literary and musical works, designs and even technologies built and owned by a business.

And because intellectual properties are naturally orchestrated and created by the human intellect, we mostly call them intangible or non-physical assets.

These assets can be beneficial to both your company and your customers. Some of your business benefits include a competitive advantage with which you can compete in the global market, motivate more innovations, and increase customer trust and loyalty.

Your customers, on the other end, get to purchase high-quality products without any fear of getting counterfeits and fake goods and services at any point.

Benefits of monitoring and securing your brand assets

Some of the benefits of monitoring your brand’s intellectual assets include:

• To prevent IP theft

Many people looking to start a business today would instead steal an idea than create one themselves. For this reason, the number of those looking to steal intellectual properties is steadily increasing.

For instance, years ago, a report was released stating how a group identified as Advanced Persistent Threat 10 (APT 100) had been attacking and stealing IP information from several companies across the globe.

To prevent such occurrences, businesses, whether small or big, must put measures in place to regularly monitor and secure their intangible properties because it is only by doing so that one can stay ahead of the infringers who are getting even more challenging to stop.

• To prevent the creation of counterfeits

Counterfeiting of goods and services have also become a significant concern for businesses. Infringers can use your IP to manufacture fake products with complete impunity and absolutely no regards for the law. Counterfeiting and privacy are steadily rising, yet we lack the proper mechanism to stop these activities altogether.

The most effective option is to monitor your IP information continually, so you know early enough when infringers are about to use it for their unlawful acts.

Challenges of monitoring brand assets online

This online brand assets monitoring job is essential, and for that, one would, naturally, expect the process to be a little less complicated. Yet this is never the case as the task can be faced with severe challenges. Some of these challenges include:

• Gathering useful data

One major challenge that many companies face when trying to secure their assets online is gathering useful information. With the world now a global village, there is the need to look in every crook and cranny if you want to monitor your valuable assets. Meaning that you need to visit multiple websites at a time, and many of these websites can be outside your location.

The setbacks associated with this much data gathering, especially from a restricted geo-location, is more than enough to deter anybody from monitoring their assets online.

• Cost of monitoring brand assets online

Monitoring these assets online does not come cheaply. Every part of the process will most likely cost your organisation some useful resources.

Gathering and storing a large amount of data necessary for intellectual property protection, as well as storing and analysing this data, could cost enough to dissuade some companies from even attempting.

The solution to these challenges

There is a simple solution for both of the problems described above, and that is the use of proxies. Proxies can be used for web scraping and crawling, standing as intermediaries between your computer and the target websites. You get a unique Internet Protocol (IP address) and proxy address every time. This is important to prevent any form of blocking and conceal your original internet protocol address.

Hence, to effectively monitor and secure your brand’s intellectual property, you will need to involve proxies or reliable web scraping tools. Visit the Oxylabs’ website for more information about data collection solutions for intellectual property protection.

Conclusion

The work of intellectual property protection, however vital, is very challenging. Businesses lose a lot of revenue after their IP is stolen or their goods and services counterfeited, yet the challenges of protecting the brand’s assets sometimes make it hard for them to do anything about this.

However, proxies and web scraping tools have helped many companies protect that which is rightfully theirs and still do the same today.