By: Brian J. Meli
Most, if not all high-profile consumer brands commit considerable time, energy and treasure to safeguarding their valuable trademark and copyright assets from would-be infringers. Those efforts tend to focus on rooting out domain name cybersquatters, keeping brand names and logos off of inferior knock-offs, stemming the illegal copying and distribution of copyright-protected merchandise, 
and shutting down the illicit websites that notoriously traffic in all of the above. But there’s a new front in the war on intellectual property, one where the threat posed by counterfeited and pirated goods has quietly become just as insidious. Far from the big-box shelves, the online auctions and the Internet landing pages that have long been the front lines of this conflict; hidden in plain sight only a few taps away, lies a large and expanding commercial ecosystem rife with infringement activity—a place that, until recently, has operated largely outside the focus of brand enforcement officials. This relatively new and dangerous frontier is the mobile app marketplace. Continue reading
Legalmatter 