For many organisations, intellectual capital is one of their prime assets; hence the theft of such property can seriously impact profitability and competitive advantage. Theft of intellectual property commonly includes designs, processes, pricing information or customer lists. It is imperative to move quickly to establish what assets have been stolen for immediate countermeasures. AXIS provides discreet fact gathering services and other investigative techniques (often involving the use of specialised ground investigations) needed to resolve the situation promptly, and advise the client of immediate actions that need to be taken to cushion the effects of theft.
 
Theft of intellectual property may also include the spreading of malicious rumours or harmful allegations that can be of serious consequence to the image of the company. With our experience and knowledge in the business environment, we provide your business information and consultation on time sensitive situations that need decisive decisions to be made in response to the alleged rumours.

Losses as a result of Intellectual Property infringements can occur from many sources including employees, competitors or would-be competitors. A recent phenomenon in this area is when mass-manufacturers study the success of a patent or copyright owners’ product design. They then replicate the design immediately and flood the market with inferior and potentially dangerous copied products. This could apply to the pharmaceuticals and chemicals industry, as a prime example.  Failure to detect and take action against any IP infringements will undermine the value of your Intellectual Property rights and cause problematic precedents for future infringements.

Steps to keep your intellectual property safe.
• Identify it – if employees understand what to protect, they can better understand how to protect and who to protect it from.

• Prioritise it – we map your company's assets and determine what information, if lost, would hurt your company the most. We then consider which of those assets are the most accessible and place them accordingly in risk groupings.

• Label it – we put into effect a system to correctly label and declare what belongs to you. This will go a long way in proving your case in court should the need arise.

• Lock it up – we design and implement physical and data asset protection.

• Train you to think like us – being more aware would make you consider protecting client information, shredding paper documents in the rubbish bin containing important information and other practices that can safeguard your competitive edge.

The Incident
This was a major project undertaken in the recent past. It was along the lines of trademark and product infringement and involved investigations for a large European firm, whose branded luxury products were being imported into the country, and then locally labeled and distributed. This was causing continuing financial losses to the brand owners, not to mention the corruption of the brand name. They were part of a large conglomerate and the continued loss of sales in the Asian region (including this country) had a serious impact on their annual sales forecast and margins and was fast becoming a point of grave matter for the shareholders. Of concern was also the fact that the infringing products were of reasonably high quality and were not being sold cheaply as would have been expected. This meant that the counterfeiters maintained a plant with adequate machinery and were thus able to mass produce the ‘fake’ items in question.

Our  Solution
AXIS was successful in assisting clients to identify, confirm and pursue several important leads with regards to the manufacturing and distribution channels and storage of the fake products. It was decided the best course of action was to conduct a series of carefully planned ground investigations. These investigations were undertaken with two teams of operatives with a plethora of expertise between them. We were able to penetrate into the activities of the main local distributor and consequently able to obtain sufficient leads and intelligence to identify the actual manufacturer who turned out to be based in Taiwan. 

Further investigations also led to the identification of a linked company whose sole job was to act as importers. The company in question was already under investigation in another country for questionable activities along the same lines. Our investigations eventually led to the identification of two locations in the northern part of Malaysia. Our next mode of action was the surveillance of both the locations in the efforts to garner irrefutable proof that would stand up in a court of law. This proved to be an arduous, grinding task as both the locations were not easily accessible to unwelcomed visitors. Our experienced team however remained resolute and eventually managed to slip through the security as soon as an opening presented itself.

The Final Outcome
The authorities were informed as sufficient evidence was gathered. The authorities acted upon our report, playing a waiting game for a few days, then raiding both locations based on surveillance we supplied, that showed one of the company’s bigwigs would make an appearance every Thursday, at 6 p.m sharp to check the proceedings. A large volume of data was seized during the raid from within the computers of the culprits and this, in turn, revealed the identities of their counterparts in Taiwan and also the methods of distribution for the same products in other countries in Asia. The infringing parties were prosecuted and were slapped with heavy fines and jail sentences. Although there were attempts to destroy some physical volumes of information, our forensic experts managed to salvage a sizeable amount of evidence. The client was able to renew their market share almost immediately due to the disruption of the counterfeit activity and continues to this day to enjoy a good sales volume.