CONSUMER HEALTHCARE
“GSK put things in place to try and prevent it, such as security measures on the packs. Te trademark department also spends a lot of time training customs officials, and building up our contacts with them. GSK also makes customs recordals wherever it can around the world.”
Sometimes, it helps to have people on the ground from outside the company assisting with detection and enforcement. “GSK has an internal corporate security department and also uses private investigators”, she says. “If we ever get wind of anything we always investigate and take action wherever possible. Public health is our first priority.”
Tackling copycats
“We mostly do it through the administrative authorities in China. Tat works very well,” Stopford says. Where possible, GSK will organise seizures of infringing products. A recent case concerned ‘apreafresh’, an Aquafresh copycat.
While GSK’s strategy is largely effective, it does force counterfeiters to raise their game as well, making counterfeit products even harder to track. One such technique is to package products so they look like parallel imports.
And it’s not just China that occupies the team. GSK recently organised a sweep in Vietnam against various lookalikes and fake versions of its analgesic Panadol. Te raids turned up millions
of tablets. Such a crackdown sends a strong signal to customers and counterfeiters that GSK takes the issue seriously.
Closer to home
Anyone that has visited a European supermarket will be familiar with the fine line treaded by many products in terms of their trade dress and branding. Supermarket alternatives to popular products sometimes look perilously similar to the leading brand. Indeed, there have been several recent cases where brands have sued supermarkets alleging infringement by alternative products. Tis is a tricky issue for brands, and one that GSK monitors closely.
Stopford says: “Wherever we can take action, we will. Wherever we feel that the line has been crossed and the law allows us to enforce our rights, we do. We take it very seriously.”
Germany is a case in point. “In supermarkets in Germany in particular, we do see a lot of lookalikes,” Stopford says, “but thankfully, we can also take steps to prevent it in Germany.”
Nuts and bolts
Te GSK trademark team is part of one of the larger in-house trademark departments in the business. In practice, that means apart from litigation, nearly all legal work on trademarks in the US and UK/CTM is handled in house. Stopford says co-operation with other areas
20 World Intellectual Property Review November/December 2010
of the legal department is constant, and the trademark team can be involved very early in a brand launch.
“We try and get involved as soon as possible,” she says. “We’ll advise the commercial teams on what might be protectable. In some ways, we’re constantly educating them, particularly on the marketing side where there may be personnel changes and people that don’t have much experience of dealing with trademarks.”
Tis is the process for brand development, but for copy approval, of adverts or publications, there is a central copy review system. Te trademark team will only get involved near the end of the process, to give anything a once over before it is released.
Perhaps it used to be the case that trademark attorneys were seen as junior partners to patent experts, not just in-house but in the wider legal community. With the rise of the Internet, the increasing incidence of counterfeit products, and the preeminent value placed on brands, those times are well and truly gone. Even for a company like GSK, which as a whole relies heavily on patents to drive its business, it is absolutely paramount to make sure that its brands are protected. For consumer healthcare products, that effort is even more important. So far, results have been good.
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