Creating an Effective Anti-Counterfeiting Strategy on a Tight Budget

Your product line is hot. Maybe a seasonal release is driving a spike in sales, or a new design is generating buzz on social media. That’s the good news. The bad news? Counterfeiters, knockoff artists, and copyists are everywhere—and the internet only magnifies the issue.

For retailers and asset protection teams, counterfeiting isn’t just a nuisance. It’s a threat to brand value, customer trust, and revenue. Unlike luxury brands with multi-million-dollar enforcement budgets, most organizations must undertake anti-counterfeiting strategies with limited resources.

LP professionals are uniquely positioned to lead this fight. Just as they do with internal theft or organized retail crime, they can apply discipline, intelligence, and prioritization to combat counterfeit goods.

- Digital Partner -

A Four-Step Framework

This series outlines four steps to creating a cost-effective anti-counterfeiting program:

Assess the scope of the problem and categorize knockoffs.
Prioritize the threats that matter most.
Ensure your intellectual property foundation is strong.
Pursue strategies that cut through the distribution chain.

In this first installment, we’ll focus on step one: assessing and categorizing the problem.

Types of Knockoffs

Counterfeits come in many forms, and you may face several at once. Common categories include:

Cheap counterfeits: Low-quality imitations, like a $25 “Rolex” sold on a street corner
High-end counterfeits: More sophisticated, priced at 60–80 percent of the genuine product, often sold online or through discount chains
Design copies (dupes): Products that mimic creative designs without copying the brand name, blurring legal lines
Altered goods: Authentic items modified to appear more expensive, such as adding aftermarket embellishments

Mapping Distribution Channels

Understanding where knockoffs flow into the market is critical. They may be:

Sold on online marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, social platforms)
Pushed through rogue websites using your brand name or imagery
Distributed via brick-and-mortar channels such as unauthorized discount stores, off-price retailers, or boutiques

Each channel brings its own investigative and legal challenges, along with opportunities for disruption.

LP Solutions

Measuring the Harm

Not all counterfeits cause the same level of damage. LP professionals should consider the following types of harm:

Sales diversion: Knockoffs siphon off demand, reducing margins

Tarnishment of reputation: Poor quality fakes can confuse consumers and erode brand trust. Legally, different types of confusion are recognized, including:

- Point-of-sale confusion: Buyer believes it’s genuine.
- Post-sale confusion: Buyer knows it’s fake, but can use it to deceive others who assume it’s real.
- Initial interest confusion: Customer is drawn in by the appearance of authenticity, even if subsequently the customer realizes it is not.
Brand dilution: Floods of knockoffs reduce exclusivity and demand
Misuse of post-sale services: Customers may unknowingly send fakes for repair, wasting time and damaging trust

What Comes Next

By categorizing knockoffs by type, channel, and harm, LP teams gain a clearer picture of the counterfeit landscape. This assessment lays the foundation for prioritization—deciding which problems to tackle first for maximum ROI.

In the next installment, we explore step two: how to prioritize and allocate limited resources to the threats that matter most.

Milton Springut is a partner in the Litigation Department and the Intellectual Property and Technology Group at Herrick, Feinstein LLP. He has nearly thirty years of practice, where he has been counsel in numerous patent, trade secret, and computer law litigations. His clients have ranged from startups to Fortune 500 companies, on matters involving technologies such as computer processors, mobile payments, e-commerce, telephony, video systems, and medical devices.