Trademarks are the legal identity of a company, product or services which helps it to differentiate itself from its competitors. A trademark cannot be same as the existing one and should be used only for the claimed purpose according to figures by the government 2,55,993 number of trade marks were registered during the last fiscal year of 2020-21 and the waiting period ranges from 8-12 months.

Blockchain Trademarks

Blockchain with its smart contracts feature can sum up all these months of hard work into weeks. Your trademark would have a unique code and will be protected by blocks with time and date stamp showing the originality of the intellectual property at a specific date and time also the usage of the property can be easily tracked through nodes which are interconnected across networks.

The details are stored into decentralized ledgers which gives an extra boost and speeds up the process and the benefits of Blockchain in trade marking are numerous, some of which are:

• Fast processing – Blockchain technology works using decentralized digital ledgers which makes record keeping easy and fast since the approval processes are generally carried out using smart contracts.
• Proof of originality – Blockchain helps in objection handling and cross checking of trademarks quickly since the data is stored via digital ledgers this helps in proving the originality of trademark.
• Documented existence during particular time – Every data in Blockchain comes with date and time stamp on real time basis, this would help is showing the existence of trademark at any particular time in the past after its registration.

But, there’s more to how Blockchain is solving some of the major problems today.

According to a report by Boston consulting group, the second-hand goods market is supposed to be more than $35 billion over the next few years especially for luxury items.

Luxury items are one of the most sold goods on the second-hand goods market, due to their high market cost and high aspirational costs not everyone can afford brand new luxury products and so the market is always full of demand.

Since the market value of luxury products are very high, the brands often suffer huge loss on sales due to counterfeit products and the loss in sales runs into millions, every year. To tackle this issue brands have started using Blockchain solutions. Most consumers have no idea that they have been cheated by forged goods in name of original goods and this not a one-time thing the goods once entered into a market cannot be traced back.

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Luxury brands have a strong brand image and brand personality, which they have developed over time and is backed with customer support who have been buying their products so incase a loyal customer buys a counterfeit product and the customer is not satisfied by the product it may hamper the brand image and the brand would lose not only on the revenue but will also lose an important customer as well. Retaining customers is much easier and more cost effective because the customer has been with you for some time so the brand knows the customer and incase of luxury brands the customer base in it is easy to identify the customers.

Once a counterfeit product has been identified brands make sure to remove it from the process entirely and this helps the brand to retain customer confidence but its easy when the counterfeit products are in small quantities but today the counterfeit market is at 3.3% and this market share is increasing whoppingly which is a major concern for all brands.

So, The Million-Dollar Question Is, How Does Blockchain Help In Tackling This Problem?

Blockchain in brand protection is ongoing research but the major reason to it is whenever a company manufactures new products, each product would get a unique code in the serialization process which would be protected by blocks which makes the data immutable, would have a date and time stamp to validate its manufacturing at a specific date and time. Customers while buying the products can scan the unique code and check the details about the product and cross check it with the certificate of authenticity provided by brands.

Track And Trace

Blockchain technology provides track and trace solution so that a user can check if the product is genuine and see its manufacturing date and its entire journey through the supply chain which would be proof of its authenticity.

Immutability

The data is protected by blocks which are accepted by all the systems running this system, the data once entered in the Blockchain system remains forever and cannot be changed making the data immutable to any alteration.

Proof Of Existence

All the data in Blockchain comes with date and time stamp on real time basis which gives proof of existence at particular date and time which is beneficial in case of trademarks to track the existence.

Long Run

The business Environment is changing rapidly and the usage of Blockchain in trademark and brand protection can solve the present problems and make the process more efficient by using Blockchain technology at each step may it be production to customer engagement brands can get a full proof solution for their daily problems.

Changing Situation

Startups are trying and are coming up with new process features using Blockchain to tackle this issue and help the brand to tackle counterfeit products in the market. Companies like MSRvantage have worked on providing customized Blockchain platforms for each industry, since they already specialize in services like asset digitization, track and trace, rewards and loyalty programs and smart contracts with their experience in this field they have an extra edge in Blockchain technology.

Luxury brand would many times have counterfeit market for them, and Blockchain is the solution to their problems of Counterfeit and Brand protection with its easy adaptability, big data analysis. Blockchain in trademarks and Brand protection with its track and trace solution, smart contracts, immutability, digital asset the problem can be tackled easily it can be said that its just the beginning of a long-term partnership where in brands actively use technology to tackle these problems and be more aggressive in their approach to tackle counterfeit products like never before.

BALAJI KANDREGULA

Director - Products and Solutions

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