SENDING YOUR BRAND GLOBAL: THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

SN ANKU IP Law firm in partnership with The SHEconomy Africa project under the Oxford Africa Women Leadership Institute (OWALI) trained and provided technical support to a network of 99 women business owners and professionals on the role of intellectual property in sending their brands global.

Brands are not merely another word for logo; they are considered to be the drivers for innovation, differentiation, and diversity (Sandner, 2009). It is the primary identity of a business, product, or service. A strong brand engenders feelings of trust, reliability, loyalty, empathy, responsiveness, and recognition in a customer’s mind.

The importance of branding is not only the mere brand strategy but also the enforcement of intellectual property rights. A successful brand usually attracts “copycats”. These may range from free riders seeking to ride on the reputation of the successful brand to outright counterfeits on the market. Therefore, an unprotected brand may be exposed to such copycats, who will in turn dilute the brand and cost the owner of the brand its market share, the acquired uniqueness of the brand, as well as its reputation and customer loyalty, which will ultimately result in a loss of income or revenue. Whether a brand is long-established or relatively young, it is the intellectual property rights within the brand that allow the business behind it to thrive. (IPO 2010).

Businesses need to take steps to secure their brands in all markets of interest and have a dedicated workforce to secure, maintain, and manage their brands. The workforce must understand the importance of intellectual property rights to the very existence of brands and the fact that IPRs are assets to the business. They must also have the skill to manage and monitor the business’s intellectual property rights. In the alternative, a business may outsource the management and monitoring of their IPRs to IP firms with the relevant capacity to provide such services.