Under the auspices of its legal committee, the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) has launched a project intended to solve the problem of brand abuse over the internet, launching a sort of technological “blitzkrieg” against online parasites.
The legal committee, chaired by the WFSGI's legal counsel, Jochen M. Schaefer, has found that many of the federation's leading members and their brands have been affected by a variety of infringements on their online intellectual property (IP) rights. They have sometimes materialized in the shape of rogue websites that draw consumers to unofficial websites and earn money on the number of clicks that they generate; through phony operators hijacking domain names, including the registered trademarks of reputable sports brands and/or their companies; or websites selling outright fakes on legal and well-known internet platforms such as Ali Baba and Taobao.
One of the problems with such online pests is that it usually takes many months to get a website closed down, but only a few days (if not hours) to have it immediately replaced by others. The WFSGI is therefore teaming up with a highly specialized Italian company, Convey of Torino, which is equipped to tackle the issue more decisively: Through sophisticated software tools, it has the means to trace and to identify the ultimate owners of entire clusters of rogue websites.
Most frequently, these operators infringe upon the rights of several well-known brands at the same time. It turns out that the majority of servers they are using are based in such supposedly civilized countries as the U.S., Switzerland and Germany, making it somewhat easier to attack them efficiently and collectively by judicial administrative enforcement means.
Acting on behalf of a group of member companies, the WFSGI intends to target a spate of phony website operators through a form of swift electronic arbitration and alternative dispute resolution procedures. It only takes two to three months to obtain a ruling that could get a dollop of offending websites removed – hundreds of them in just a few actions. WFSGI intends to carry out such a strike in the near term, but wants to get more suppliers on board beforehand.
Convey is confident that it can get the vast majority of the rogue sites removed in just a few months with these services, provided that they obtain judicious financial terms. If the costs were shared among the affected brands, the WFSGI reasons, the services would cost less and the enforcement would be more efficient than if each supplier went after these infringers separately.
The WFSGI initiative could therefore turn into a very efficient alternative for companies that struggle for months on end to obtain any ruling about iffy online interference with their brand (for more information, you can contact Jochen M. Schaefer at sj@sjlegal.de).
