IP DETECTION
Discovering the truth about an IP investigator is difficult enough without having to expose the myth as well. WIPR examines the facts.
Corporate counsels and law firms are oſten faced with a challenge: how to gather the evidence and knowledge to win their case without tipping off a suspected infringer. When the time comes for straightforward information-gathering to turn to sleuthing, IP professionals may call upon the trilby-wearing IP investigator, who waits patiently in the wings with a mackintosh slung over one arm.
For trilby and mackintosh read cleanly pressed suit. Te truer picture is not all dark alleys, femme fatales and bad drinking habits—IP investigators are seasoned professionals of the corporate world, in some cases with decades of experience of dealing with IP infringement.
IP investigators gather information to be used as evidence in a court of law. Tey aim to protect and serve IP in ways that their clients cannot, particularly by proving and preventing infringement of trademarks, patents and copyright.
Brand owners, corporate counsels and law firms sometimes discuss the idea of carrying out
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an IP investigation themselves. But they don’t always have the necessary tradecraſt required to successfully investigate an IP infringer, so they may not know how best to tackle an investigation. Naturally, IP investigators are protective of the proprietary techniques used to gather information on a target. Ken Taylor, president and chief executive officer at Marksmen, a California-based IP investigation company, believes in preparatory research before contact with the target is made. He says: “Generally speaking, all investigators should do a good amount of research before making contact with the target of the investigation. Most of the work is undercover work, so you need to know what you are getting into before you get into it.”
Online research is a fundamental requirement of a successful IP investigation, but an overreliance on search engines is perhaps where a prospective client may falter when conducting their own investigation. “We know the best methods of researching hidden data,” says Ross Bulla, president at the Treadstone Group, a North Carolina-based IP investigation company. Tis
information exists on the ‘deep web’ or ‘hidden web’—websites that are not registered with search engines are considered hidden—and now there is the problem of Web 2.0. Essentially, Web 2.0 is information that exists on the Internet but is not searchable, mainly because it exists on interactive websites, such as social-networking sites. He adds: “It’s not crawled by search engines, so you won’t find it by doing a Google search.”
To combat this slippery information, IP investigators cast a wide net in their online search, accessing databases and libraries that are both well hidden themselves and costly to use. Bulla says: “Tere are specific Internet libraries and sites that are industry or market-specific that aren’t common knowledge. We have the subscriptions to these databases, which cost $10,000 a year. Also, we have propriety databases that have been created, as well as access to press and media databases.”
Eliciting information
Gathering information from the Internet is quite a complex affair, but gathering it from a
World Intellectual Property Review May/June 2010
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