RELX CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
MANAGING COMPLIANCE, COUNTERFEIT, AND CHANNELS
As a brand, RELX needs to manage its online presence from three key aspects—compliance, counterfeit, and channel management.
Its sense of social responsibility, as well as the need to strictly adhere to industry regulation, necessitates that unauthorized websites and advertising are enforced upon and taken down immediately. There are also instances when local sellers don’t adhere to contractual rules when they sell or market their products in parallel markets, or use the RELX trademark without authorization, and need to be brought into compliance.
Apart from understanding and respecting the varying legislation in different jurisdictions around online sales of their products, RELX also takes a strong position on ensuring top quality and consumer safety of their products, and they don’t tolerate counterfeit or confusingly similar products that could pose a serious health risk to consumers with low quality ingredients or poor manufacturing. To uphold quality and safeguard its consumers, RELX established its own Golden Shield program to prevent the production and sale of counterfeits and confusingly similar infringing products. Their team actively works with online and offline channels such as customs authorities to eliminate illicit products from the market by monitoring and tracking fake products sold around the world.1 RELX recognizes that to counter the opportunists leveraging the RELX brand to continually put out imitation products requires long- term and consistent effort.
To complement its own robust program to stamp out unauthorized activity, RELX sought a partner that has the expertise in online channels to support its global expansion, stay in compliance, and combat counterfeits.
RELX Technology is a leading innovative product manufacturer with over 60% of market share in its industry in China. Globally, its brand is growing rapidly with its products being sold in over 50 countries. It aims to empower its users through technology and design, and boasts a range of products in its product portfolio. RELX takes its social responsibility very seriously, investing intensively in research and development, and leveraging AI and facial recognition technology to prevent underage access to its product. It established its Guardian Program to protect minors and prevent misuse of their products.
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Counterfeiters are quick to take advantage of the convenient, and often anonymous environment that the online space affords them to set up shop easily and quickly. They buy easy-to-register domains, often combining the brand with keywords in the domain name, and use RELX’s logo to trick consumers into trusting their website.
RELX's legal department had discovered several domains that were registered by third parties. In RELXChina.com and RELXcn.com, the domains used keywords associated with the country where RELX originated. The websites looked exactly like RELX’s official website and sold RELX-branded products, but the registrants of the domain name had used WHOIS protection that hid the identity of the real owners.
Others had combined infringing domains with eCommerce related keywords such as RELXwholesale. com, or RELXtmall.com—where “tmall” is a popular local eCommerce platform in China. Another had also used a “cousin domain,” registering under another extension, in this case, a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) RELX. shop.
In all the above cases, the RELX's legal department and the CSC team were able to provide sufficient evidence that the third-party domains were confusingly similar, analyzed the profile of the registrants based on insights it uncovered to prove they did not have legitimate rights, and were used in bad faith. They successfully employed the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to order a domain-ownership transfer to RELX.
CONTROL OVER CHANNELS
One area of concern for RELX's legal department was the emerging Southeast Asian markets and its online marketplaces. Within a few months, RELX's legal department and CSC identified numerous unauthorized listings across several popular regional eCommerce applications, and took action on listings of intentionally confusingly similar goods, mitigating revenue loss—and more importantly—protecting RELX’s customers from questionable listings.
Based on the collaboration and deep understanding of RELX’s zero tolerance to brand infringements and abuse, customized rules were developed to speed up approval processes, allowing CSC’s enforcement team to take swift action against infringers. Within weeks, the team was able to take action on more than a hundred websites, apps, and social media sites.
RELX gained control of its online channels with full visibility through a range of monitoring services on the web, marketplaces, and mobile apps. Now when infringements are identified, CSC’s global team of enforcement experts help analyze and take enforcement action on behalf of RELX, so the RELX team can focus on their strengths in the local jurisdiction, and depend on a truly international partner to detect and enforce on a global scale.
As a representative to many global brands, CSC is adept at working with global marketplace platforms and understanding their brand protection programs. RELX benefits from this through CSC’s effective online anti-counterfeiting efforts, and a mutual three-way relationship between brand, partner, and platforms.
GLOBAL EXPANSION
As RELX expands its footprint globally, CSC supports its global go-to-market strategy, based on its experience in brand protection and digital asset management. CSC advises and ensures that brands take a holistic approach to secure their online brand based on their unique needs, and keep up to date with evolving internet policies that may impact its business.
“CSC is very professional and efficient in all aspects, be it technical screening, infringement analysis, or abuse takedowns—and is a trustworthy partner,” says Sean Dai, RELX general counsel.
In line with its brand strategy to consolidate their product portfolio, RELX leverages CSC’s global enterprise capabilities to consolidate its domain portfolio—ensuring it has the vital domains it needs in its business markets through registration, acquisition, and even domain recovery. And CSC actively monitors this domain namespace for potential infringements that could mislead and bring harm to RELX customers.
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