Brand Protection in 2026
With multiple organisations all over the world reporting on the increase of counterfeit goods being manufactured and mass sold in the marketplace in countries like China andTurkey, we have seen first hand just how professional these Organised Crime Groups have become.
Now is the time for major designer brands to get serious about brand protection and to be more proactive in protecting their rights.
What is Brand Protection?
Brand protection is the process of safeguarding a company's intellectual property (IP) from those who may try to profit from it illegally. This includes protecting a company's trademarks, domain names, design marks, copyrights and patents both online and in the marketplace.
Brand protection is important because it helps to:
- Protect a company's image, reputation and overall value.
- Protect a company from losing revenue.
- Protect brand abuse.
- Protect against counterfeiters, copyright pirates, and other infringers.
- Prosecute persistent offenders.
The quality of the counterfeits in recent years has been very good, not only the products but also the packaging, wrapping, labeling, guarantee cards and instruction manuals, and sometimes difficult to tell, they are sold in the marketplace at increased pricing
Why Do You Need Brand Protection?
Your brand is worth protecting - protecting your brand is important for the success of your business. When you register your brand with IPO then it is important you protect it. Brand protection is affordable - brand protection solutions can secure revenue growth, increase profits, foster customer trust, ensure consumer safety and in the long run is cost effective.
Surelock’s Brand Protection Team
We advise on a brand protection strategy and then diligently help to protect it and bring infringers to justice. Working for several major brands together we share the costs on intelligence gathering, surveillance, undercover work and eventual enforcement actions. Surelock’s Brand Protection Team are part of one of the oldest established Investigative and Security Consultancy companies in the UK, with over 25 years’ experience. Consistently carrying out investigations and achieving some of the largest seizures of our clients’ counterfeits, also policing the internet worldwide for infringements, taking down 1000’s of illegal sites every month.
We work alongside officers from UK Border Force in having infringing items stopped and the port of entry, and destroyed but sadly this past year such detentions for IP have been drastically reduced as UKBF often have other priorities.
Our extremely dedicated team of experienced investigators, surveillance and undercover operatives work tirelessly for our clients gathering intelligence, making covert visits, test purchases and carry out surveillance in order to identify the locations where the counterfeits are made, stored and sold.
We are retained by some of the world’s most popular brands and are often in the news because of our successes, we have been doing this work for over 20 years, so we really do know what we are talking about– we do try and explain to our clients they need to be more proactive, but sometimes there are budget restraints, these need to be address if we are to be successful.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG)
Our membership of the ACG is so important for us, we often gather intelligence, to facilitate major enforcements, which other members benefit from, with collaborative raids all over the UK. ACG represents more than 3,000 brands affected by this influx of fakes into the UK and delivers an international network of information, advice and contacts on all aspects of IP protection.
Working with Government and law enforcement agencies since 1980, ACG is focused on providing an effective and sustained response to counterfeiting.
Some of the biggest seizures ever in the UK during recent years, we have been directly
responsible for some of the biggest seizures of counterfeit designer wear, high-end watches and perfumes ever seen in the UK, working with the authorities to take these sometimes-dangerous products off the streets and assisting in the prosecution of major criminal gangs. These successes are achieved by hard work, gathering intelligence and utilising our professional surveillance teams and undercover operatives to supply the best possible evidence.
Why We Succeed in Brand Protection
Our greatest success, working with a dedicated team from PIPCU - £200,000 million worth of counterfeit watches seized from a warehouse in Southall, West London, and we have hadseveral other major seizures since.
Sometimes brands do not fully appreciate the hard work that goes into achieving such massive seizures. These infringers are not just sellers in the marketplace, they are often linked organised counterfeiters / criminals, manufacturing, importing and distributing the fakes, part of organised crime groups, working internationally, that literally make millions from their wrong doings.
These results only come about by being proactive, because of our dedication and the great deal of hard work by our brand protection team, we don’t just sit in our office waiting for theauthorities to call us. Some brand protection companies are merely reactive, relying on the authorities to make seizures / detentions, but in recent years with government cutbacks these have reduced such actions.
We have worked for some brands who have had the most serious counterfeit problems and managed to get this under control with the help of the authorities both home and abroad actually closing down the manufacturing outlets.
Who We Work With
We are fortunate to have a very dedicated team of professionals, drawn from the Police, Trading Standards, HM Customs, Military and the Private Sector, backed up by experienced undercover and surveillance operatives, that’s why we can offer a service second to none. There are only a handful of proactive brand protection companies in the UK and we are always willing and grateful to collaborate with them.
Our thanks go out to the authorities we work with, Intellectual Property Office (IPO), City ofLondon Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), Trading Standards all over the UK and UK Border Force, who without their help none of our successes would have happened, and for their commitment in putting together evidence for prosecutions which is time consuming and costly.
So, if you are serious and looking for assistance with your brand protection, look no more, Surelock will assist you to design an affordable anti-counterfeit strategy, police the internet andmarketplace to keep your brand safe. If you need help building a brand protection strategy for your business or with proactive investigations to help stop counterfeits, then please do not hesitate to get in touch, we are always happy to talk and advise.
