Reaching the Brand Protection Tipping Point

According to Lynn Crutchfield, president of the BPA, various brand security issues have been defined and include counterfeiting, piracy, simulation, diversion, supply chain integrity, and warranty fraud. These and other issues have been consolidated into one category called IP (intellectual property) theft. IP theft leads to an estimated $512 billion in lost sales globally per year. Despite that staggering estimate, according to preliminary results from recent AWA research, many brand owners are still not cognizant of the problem of IP theft or the financial implications to their companies. Money spent on brand protection is still spent in defensive and reactionary ways such as on legal fees and investigations. That being said, Crutchfield asserts that the field of product authentication is becoming an industry unto itself and feels that the BPA’s message was heard loud and clear at the conference. “Brand protection is an emerging market, the technology is here, now let’s get going,” he said.