From concept to market, we work across borders to protect your most valuable brands and intellectual property. Venable's Brand and Content Protection team has years of experience battling counterfeiting, piracy, and product diversion on a global scale. We use an innovative and proactive approach in working with our clients to develop effective brand protection programs that prevent or reduce the negative impact counterfeiting and IP theft has on your business.
We help you identify and remedy the gaps in your IP portfolio and business operations that make you vulnerable to those seeking to steal your IP and trade on your goodwill. Venable coordinates and manages the filing and registration of copyrights, design patents, trademarks, and customs recordals where necessary, for successful IP enforcement actions. We have helped brand owners recover substantial damages through enforcement actions and litigation aimed at high-value counterfeiters, and have facilitated the seizure and destruction of numerous counterfeit products.
Whether you seek to implement a global brand protection program or just to pursue counterfeiters in a particular market, we design programs that are custom-tailored to meet your business objectives and address local nuances wherever you operate. We work seamlessly with a proven network of IP enforcement professionals around the world. Furthermore, we leverage our years of experience and breadth of global contacts to work efficiently with local government officials, and various international and regional IP enforcement and policy associations, to better protect our clients' valuable brands and IP rights.
Venable has a long history of working with regulatory and law enforcement agencies to address counterfeiting issues. Our team has well-established relationships with agencies such as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC). Our attorneys have also created and/or worked with industry-wide anti-counterfeiting groups, such as the Art Copyright Coalition, the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC), the International Trademark Association (INTA), the Electronic Retailer's Association (ERA), and other groups.
Venable's Brand and Content Protection Team has been recognized as a national first-tier practice for trademarks and brand protection in U.S. News – Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms." The firm also ranks in the top 20 law firms in terms of applications filed and registrations issued, based on annual rankings issued in 2007-2015, by Trademark Insider/World Trademark Review, and among the top 10 law firms by Intellectual Property Today in 2015. Venable's trademark practice is recognized in the World Trademark Review 1000 – The World's Leading Trademark Professionals among the top groups in the United States – DC Metro area. Partners Justin Pierce and Marcella Ballard authored the U.S. chapter in the Anti-counterfeiting 2012 – A Global Guide, published by the World Trademark Review magazine. Venable is one of the few law firms that is not only an active member of the IACC, but also an active participant within the INTA. A number of Venable attorneys serve in key committee roles, relevant to the anti-counterfeiting and brand protection, in the INTA (Anti-counterfeiting Committee) and the IACC (China, Customs and Internet Task Forces).
Practice Focus
Brand protection programs, including:
- Strategy development
- Online brand monitoring
- Customs and law enforcement training
Ending and prosecuting counterfeiting activity, including:
- Pursuing civil and criminal remedies
- Counterfeit product tracking and seizures
- Pursuing emergency and permanent injunctions
- Securing monetary judgments
- Litigation