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. To view our previous member spotlights, click here.
We provide invisible authentication solutions with no manufacturing cost and detected with a smartphone app.
AlpVision Cryptoglyph: a digital invisible marking that is applied to printed products such as cartons, labels, and blister packs using regular visible ink or varnish and standard printing processes (offset, rotogravure, flexo, laser, inkjet, etc.).
AlpVision Fingerprint is a unique and breakthrough covert anti-counterfeit solution that authenticates products. This solution applies to a wide variety of parts, such as molded bottles and caps, electrical appliances, mechanical parts, precious metals, watches, imaging supplies, and most plastic molded products available on the market today.
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?
Deploying our authentication solutions at very large scale is particularly rewarding.
For instance, we just completed the deployment of our Cryptoglyph solution over 50 printers worldwide. All printers were successfully qualified despite totally different printing presses setup and different cultures. In fact, the total number of products protected last year by AlpVision exceeded 30 billion.
We are also proud to develop creative solutions. For instance, we can detect counterfeited molded plastic objects or bottles, without changing anything on the object. Our app automatically detects the micro-defects already existing in the mold. That means this solution has absolutely no manufacturing costs.
How did you get into brand protection?
I worked on steganography and digital watermarking during my Ph. D.: these are digital technologies for hiding invisible information in images. We then applied those algorithms to the field of brand protection and founded the company in 2001, which progressively became one of the leaders in the field.
Can you provide your top 2 best practices for protecting IP?
My top tips are ‘be creative’ and ‘keep going.’ Every client has unique marks, distribution, sophistication of consumers/clients, and a whole host of other details that are special to them. They’ve made it in business by being creative and staying in the game. Dealing with infringers takes the same creativity and determination. I help my clients stay on top of trends and I support them with long-term strategic planning so they can stay in the game.
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?
I enjoy every client report I send to congratulate my clients on anti-counterfeiting program wins. As former in-house counsel, I know every ‘win’ is important to protecting the brand. Reporting those wins to my contact allows them to relay that information to senior management to keep them informed of how budget is spent, the marketing team to support the consistent brand use, and the sales team so they know competition from fakes is being addressed. Anti-counterfeiting is a team sport and now as outside counsel, I enjoy my role helping the client live their mission and meet their goals.
What hobbies or causes are you passionate about?
I am passionate about addressing mental health issues in my community and especially focusing on how mental health issues effect children and families. This is perhaps more important now than ever in light of the challenges and isolation some individuals are facing during the pandemic. I serve as a trustee for an entity that manages grants to mental health and children’s services providers in the City of St. Louis and as a director and advisor to a charity that provides basic health care services and education to expectant mothers and children through age four in poverty stricken southeast Missouri.
Director, Global Brand Protection, Pharmaceuticals
Somerville, NJ, USA
What is your role in your company/organization?
The Johnson & Johnson Global Brand Protection team is part of the J&J Law Department. I lead the brand protection efforts for J&J’s pharmaceutical segment. My role is to develop strategies to protect patients from the risks associated with counterfeiting, illicit diversion and tampering of J&J’s pharmaceutical products. I work closely with our commercial, quality, R&D and Supply Chain partners to identify trends, assess risks, react to illicit trade incidents and to coordinate with my J&J GBP colleagues located around the world to deploy these strategies and work to combat illicit trade globally.
What new technologies are you aware of or that you’ve used that could make a big difference in brand protection?
I think the development of mobile enabled digital authentication technologies such as digital watermarks, fingerprints, encrypted NFC, high and artificial intelligence enabled technologies etc. have the potential to make a huge difference in brand protection. By enabling features that utilize the power and the pervasiveness of mobile devices, we can dramatically increase the scale of our authentication efforts and engage end users in the process of verifying the authenticity of products.
What are the biggest impacts of counterfeits on your industry?
While the pharmaceutical industry is certainly impacted financially by counterfeiting with loss estimates in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the biggest and most important impact is to the health and safety of patients. Counterfeit drugs harm and kill vulnerable people who rely on their medications to treat cancer, diabetes, HIV, and other serious, life-threatening diseases. This is the most important impact of counterfeits in my industry and must always be the primary focus of our efforts to combat illicit trade.
How did you get into brand protection?
I’ve been involved in the brand protection as either a brand owner or a technology service provider for almost 20 years. My first introduction to brand protection was when I was a packaging engineer working for a pharma company and one of our most high-profile products was the target of a large-scale counterfeiting operation. This introduced me to brand protection as a discipline, including anti-counterfeiting technologies, risk assessment techniques, best practices in product design and learning about how counterfeiters operate. I’ve been in the field ever since.
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition, 727 15th Street NW, 9th Floor, Washington, District of Columbia 20005, United States
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