Please view this month's Member Spotlights!

We thank all of the participants for contributing and sharing their expertise with us. Member companies are randomly chosen each month to participate as a way to connect and educate our member community.

Jeff Warren

Director, Brand Protection

Burberry Limited

London, UK

What is your role in your company/organization?

I am responsible for enforcing Burberry’s intellectual property rights in EMEIA and I oversee global coordination of our criminal and Customs programs as well as digital enforcement efforts.

What are the top 2 challenges in IP enforcement you see affecting brands over the next year?

Firstly, agility. Counterfeiters continue to adapt quickly, both in product offering and logistics and do so far quicker than just a few years ago. Brand owners that fail to adapt their anti-counterfeiting strategy to meet the challenge will suffer and face increasing costs to catch up and control the problem. Secondly, focus. Brands have to focus in these challenging times and limited budgets on what is truly important to enforce and what can be left for another

What's the most rewarding part of your job / what is the thing that you've been most proud of in your anti-counterfeiting work?

The successful conclusion of a big matter is always the most rewarding part of my job. One of our biggest actions to date has been in Turkey where along with other brands we jointly raided 18 warehouses, arrested dozens of connected suspects and seized 2.1 million counterfeit products. Although it took years of investigation, our close collaboration with our fellow brands and Customs and police authorities in Europe and Turkey made this case much more successful than if we had done it alone.

Can you tell us something about yourself outside of your job?

Like many people travelling is one of my keen interests. I have been privileged and lucky enough to be able to live and work in Canada, Australia and now the UK in my career and am now a citizen of each country. Learning and experiencing other cultures has been incredibly satisfying and rewarding.

Contact info: jeff.warren@burberry.com

Lorne Lipkus

Kestenberg Siegal Lipkus LLP

Partner

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

What is your role in your company/organization?

I am a founding partner and partner in charge of the Intellectual Property department.

What's the most rewarding part of your job / what is the thing that you've been most proud of in your anti-counterfeiting work?

Igniting a passion for anticounterfeiting in others, particularly the younger generation provides me with both my greatest satisfaction and the things I am the most proud of. I recommended (and a major Canadian organization gave) an Award of Merit to an elementary school student who attended one of my anticounterfeiting talks and wrote an amazing essay on why it was wrong to buy counterfeits. The look on his face still lingers. A university student who wrote her Masters thesis on anticounterfeiting and asked me to be one of her advisors. These sort of events always make me smile at the end of long days.

How do you / your company contribute to the brand protection community? 

I try to follow the “giving back” philosophy. I personally and our brand protection group generally belong to many brand protection organizations and seek out an active volunteer role on committees and projects. We regularly take part in lectures and meetings with students, industry groups and government officials on a pro bono basis. I greatly enjoy mentoring others who want to become lawyers and others wanting to be involved in brand protection matters. We also provide accurate information on the counterfeiting problem to media in Canada to try to assist in positive and meaningful public awareness.

Who has inspired you most in life? 

My family have inspired me the most in my life, My Dad, in his all too brief, 19 years with me, showing me about passion and how he can guide me with both his presence and his absence, my Mom, still showing me that there is nothing that cannot be done through hard word and treating others with respect, my wife for showing me how far you can go with a team leader at your side every minute of every day and my children for teaching me to appreciate what my Dad missed and all of them for so much more.

Contact info: llipkus@ksllaw.com  

Heeyeon Kim

NANOBRICK (KOSDAQ: 286750)

Director, Security Business Division

Seoul, Korea

What is your role in your company/organization?

I run the entire Security Business division at NANOBRICK, help all my members from any problems that might occur in all areas. I manage marketing, production, business development, partnership in the Security Business Division and these days focusing on the integration at a division-wide, especially for the flow from customer contact point to the end production.

What makes your company unique?

“We are a Never-before World Player, mimicking Chameleon & Octopus.”

Inspired by nature, NANOBRICK (KOSDAQ: 286750) mimics chameleons and octopuses by highly sophisticated nano biomimetic technologies. Our main technology is to activate color tone/transparency changes by magnetic field and the electric field.

MTX, magnetically color changeable photonic crystal material technology that structural light reflective color turns bright into green and orange simultaneously by the same magnetic field, is the main function of our Anti-counterfeiting business based on the unique features protected by patents worldwide.

For other business areas, we’ve dominated the domestic area and successfully penetrated into the world - PCR diagnostic manufacturing market with an essential bio material for the covid-19 molecular diagnosis test.

Also, the next generation display material business is at the brink of initiation after years of partnership collaboration with a global veteran in the market.

How do you / your company contribute to the brand protection community? 

Many security elements in the world are old as a cliché.

Some security features used in banknote manufacturing are even sold in hundreds of places which implies the possibility that the anti-counterfeiting features itself can be copied.

Meanwhile, we create security features with a new value that has never existed in the market before. Chameleon mimicking technology that changes color by external magnetic fields shines brightly by simply putting daily magnets near. Our MTX, magnetically color changeable photonic crystal material technology, is the innovation itself in the stagnant security element market.

It can be applied to various applications such as tax stamps for tobacco, alcohol, and firearms of each government, identification cards, genuine authenticating documents & certificates, and also as a brand protection and anti-counterfeiting purpose of labels, pouches, and alu-alu.

Who has inspired you most in life?

I would say that Elon Musk, the CEO of TESLA has been recently inspiring me from what he said.

The ideas for critical thinking and filter bubbles are mainly about the wishful thinking innate in human, saying that we want things to be the way we wish them to be, and so we tend to filter the information that we should not skip over.

Also, I have got inspired from Benedict Cumberbatch's famous - Just Do It! Speech;

“You have every right. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out....Stop it and just DO."

I hope all of our IACC members just DO what we wish to, leaving all fears behind. 

Contact info: Heeyeon.kim@nanobrick.co.kr 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nanobrick  

Emily Cooper

Popsockets

IP Counsel, Director of Global Brand Protection

Boulder, CO, USA

What is your role in your company/organization?

One of two in-house lawyers; handle all aspects of IP, marketing, product development.

What makes your company unique?

Popsockets considers itself the category creator for phone grips. Before PopSockets, there were no phone grips. The company was very forward thinking for a start-up, in securing patents early on, which have been very important for our brand protection and which we rely on (along with product configuration marks and design patents) to rid the market of fakes. However, this is a unique distinction from many brands, that focus more on trademark/logo/trade dress based enforcement.

What’s one piece of advice you can give a brand looking to enforce their IP?

Think creatively and holistically about the different IP assets you can use to protect your brand. Patents, design patents, trademarks, product configuration marks, trade dress protection, copyrights – all have different pre-requisites to register (some are time barred, some are more attainable down the road) and different remedies. We are most successful when we have a full bag of tricks to draw on in any given action.

How did you get into brand protection?

In college I studied graphic design in addition to pre-law. My first job was at a coastal BigLaw firm where I learned IP law through the lens of patent litigation. When we moved to Colorado, I joined a different firm and my practice shifted to include trademark enforcement and brand protection work. Over time, that became my specialty, as working with marketing and creative business teams was a natural fit with my design background and interests. In house, I work closely with business units on global enforcement initiatives, and am also deeply embedded in the creative process of product development, to secure additional IP assets for the Company.

Contact info: ecooper@popsockets.com 

Steve Tallant

Systech, a Solutions Division of Markem-Imaje

Director, Solutions Marketing Group

Philadelphia, PA, USA

What is your role in your company/organization?

I am responsible for articulating to the marketplace how our solutions meet their brand protection needs. There are many layers to brand protection which I fully understand, and like to communicate on these requirements – and where our solutions fit (and don’t). Managing the marketing of Systech’s Brand Protection category and offerings is incredibly fun!

What are the top 2 challenges in IP enforcement you see affecting brands over the next year?

First is speed. Speed to illicit item discovery. Speed to legal action. Speed to stoppage. Speed to repeat the cycle. Our solution’s role is critical in reducing the time it takes to discover counterfeits in the marketplace. Our digital e-Fingerprint® authentication delivers immediate results, increasing the pace of enforcement. The second major challenge I see is with the maturation and evolution of omnichannel marketplaces. Discovery and enforcement over increasingly popular and pervasive online storefronts and social channels is difficult at best. Combining web scouring platforms for likely illicit sellers, secret purchases across marketplaces and instant authentication of items is needed.

What’s one piece of advice you can give a brand looking to enforce their IP?

IP Enforcement is not just your legal team. The counterfeiter is your unseen competitor. You need to treat them as such. Just like your product’s go-to-market strategy is cross-functional, so should your IP enforcement strategy. You need to defend your market in both reactionary and proactive ways. Make IP enforcement part of the nature of doing business. Build it into products and process. Make the layers of brand protection you use to be an active, in market resource for IP protection. Then, equip legal teams with the best information possible for enforcement and shutdown.

What hobbies or causes are you passionate about?

I have always been a fan of participating in and following sports. Over twenty years ago, I became involved with the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame (phillyhall.org). I am now a board member. We have held an annual induction ceremony honoring the legends who performed here, as well as those that are from this area and have excelled elsewhere. This covers all sports, both major and minor, and now represents the greats from 17 different sports!

Contact info: Steve.tallant@systechone.com 

DC Page  

V2 Global

Managing Partner

Miami, FL USA

What is your role in your company/organization?

Manage international and domestic operations including IP enforcement.

What makes your company unique?

What separates V2 from similar firms is our global reach.  After years in government service and now in private practice, the V2 management team has created a true international network of investigative operatives skilled in IP enforcement within their geographic expertise.

What are the top 2 challenges in IP enforcement you see affecting brands over the next year? 

The first challenge facing IP enforcement this coming year is the pandemic itself.  In recent studies, we have seen a global surge in counterfeit sales.  This is mostly due to the second challenge which is the lack of enforcement on the part of law enforcement and regulatory agencies.  The pandemic has curtailed the ability for enforcement to logistically move about to investigate and seize merchandise.  Many countries have shut down retail stores for periods of time creating a larger black market for counterfeit or diverted goods. This has created a greater need for private investigations and civil enforcement.

How did you get into brand protection?

I migrated to IP and brand protection investigations at an early age.  I was a police officer in the Midwest before becoming a US Customs Special Agent at 22 years of age.  Even though I specialized in money laundering investigations, many of my cases were trade related including the importation of counterfeit goods.  I was able to learn a great deal about supply chains in the context of the US border.  That background provided me the insight and knowledge of how transnational crimes are investigated and what these agencies require to assist manufacturers root out violators and make seizures.

Contact info: dcpage@v2-global.com