Posted by Louise Prance on 24 November 2023
Anti Copying in Design (ACID), the UK’s leading design and intellectual property (IP) advocacy organisation, and SnapDragon Monitoring, a renowned online brand protection and reputation management specialist, and have forged a strategic partnership aimed at safeguarding design businesses from the perils of counterfeits and IP infringements.
These counterfeit goods not only erode brand revenues and compromise IP, but also endanger consumers due to the use of toxic materials.
A recent SnapDragon survey discovered that nearly 20 percent of UK SMEs have fallen victim to counterfeit product sales, resulting in severe financial losses for 93 percent of them.
Moreover, an astounding £13.6 billion worth of fake goods infiltrated Britain in 2020, causing legitimate businesses to lose sales totalling £9 billion.
The collaboration between ACID and SnapDragon aims to combat these issues by offering guidance, advice, and technical monitoring to protect assets. Leveraging SnapDragon's innovative AI platform, Swoop, SMEs can continually scour the web to detect brand threats, infringements on registered and unregistered IPRs, and counterfeit product listings.
They can then take swift action to remove these threats before they damage sales, brand reputation, or customer safety. ACID complements this effort by offering membership to the UK's premier IP protection advocate. ACID, celebrating its 25th anniversary, is widely recognised for its strong advocacy for IP protection, offering creators and the design community tools for protection, deterrence, and education.
According to Dids Macdonald OBE, Co-Founder and CEO of ACID, "Imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery, especially when it has the potential to jeopardise sales, brands, and safety." She emphasises that this partnership empowers organisations to act swiftly on IP infringements and eliminate them from the internet, providing a robust resource for small and independent businesses battling the counterfeit threat."
Rachel Jones, CIO, and founder of SnapDragon Monitoring, acknowledges the significant counterfeit problem, stressing that it affects businesses of all sizes: "Counterfeits are a huge problem, yet traditional brand protection has always been geared towards bigger businesses, though counterfeits affect companies of all sizes. It doesn't matter if you are a global enterprise, or a small boutique designer, if you have developed a product, you hold the rights to its ownership and fraudsters should never get away with banking on your success. We are in the business to support these organisations, offering them accessible brand and IP protection to help them keep the products they have worked tirelessly to create safe."
