The State of Online IP Risk

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Christy: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, "The State of Online IP Risk." My name is Christy DeMaio Ziegler, and I will be your moderator.

Joining us today is Elliott Champion. Elliott is the Global Product Director at CSC in our DBS headquarters, where he is responsible for our industry-leading proprietary technology and product strategy. He is also involved in building client-specific strategies, including optimizing a brand's online presence and protecting and evolving CSC's brand protection services.

And with that, let's welcome Elliott.

Elliott: Thank you, Christy. Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you very much. I'll go to our first slide.

So first we're looking at our report, "The State of Online IP Risk 2026." So today, we're going to go over this report, and we're going to go through some of the interesting insights we've had from it.

As a quick summary at the start, every company has a digital footprint that is larger than ever, and the challenge is that the attack surface protecting that footprint has to grow just as fast. So we surveyed over 300 senior legal IP and technology leaders to understand where their online IP risk is heading, and it was very interesting data.

We're going to go over some of these insights as we go through. Some are very clear. Infringement is accelerating, i.e., AI is changing the landscape, and organizations are struggling to keep pace. So today, we're gong to be looking at what is happening, why it matters, and most importantly what organizations can do as next steps.

Okay. So first, we're going to be looking at some of our top summary data from our survey. So the top three assets or channels where IP infringement has already increased. First, we've got here internet/branded content, followed by online marketplaces, and then paid search. So these are the areas where or the channels where people are finding these IP infringements.

Not necessarily a surprise. And, of course, when we're looking at volumes, these are very different areas. Of course, marketplaces, if you produce physical products or digital products that are sold on marketplaces, you're going to see a higher volume of those. Internet and branded content though, of course, is a free environment. Anyone can pretty much register any domain, and we've gone through that in our previous webinars, looking at our 3D landscape and 3D monitoring data. Interestingly, paid search continues to be an area of concern and where they've already seen IP risk.

Now looking at the three most concerning types of infringements that these surveyors are seeing, it's interesting. These are pretty much the same numbers that you're seeing here — impersonation, phishing, and domain name abuse. Again, these are going to be things that we are seeing year to year, but they are certainly consistent areas of infringements. And, of course, impersonation has numerous subcategories, as does phishing as well. So we're going to go through lots of different types of data as we go through these. And actually, we'll go through some real-life examples further into the presentation.

Okay. So IP leaders and where they are concerned. Essentially, they've very gently said, "I'm slightly more concerned." So respondents who were "very" or "slightly" concerned about acceleration of IP threats, 77% were "slightly." Respondents stated that they had seen "slight" or "significant," it was really "slight" increases in infringements over the past 12 months.

Of course, as we started off by saying, the internet environment in itself is growing, and the attack surface is growing, so it's not something that's a surprise that we would see that the respondents are seeing those are growing. I would say, though, that this is obviously very industry dependent, and that is definitely a subcategory of these, again, but it is interesting as we continue to see certain industries take a heavy hit of the online channels are expanding.

Okay. So expectations for future IP infringements. What are the future expectations? So organizations expect infringements activity to continue increasing. Three-year forecasts are even more concerning than the 12-month predictions themselves. And protection programs must be built on a future scale, not in current volumes. There's no doubt that, of course, we've already seen people move digitally in this environment. But we're also seeing, again, the same sort of response. We're seeing "slight" or "significant" increases are the expectations from the survey as who responded.

Okay. Riskiest channels. Again, interestingly, when we look at these riskiest channels, I'll just delve a little bit deeper into these. It's funny the customers who I speak to, whether they be globally, world-renowned brands or new brands or viral brands, they're often seeing issues move from one area to another. So I would actually take these as interesting data points to say perhaps in the past, where you've seen online marketplace problems, you may now be seeing that in internet or individual domain or content issues.

One notable customer I work very closely with historically have always been focused on online marketplaces, very focused on making sure that those are as clean and clear as possible, not only for them but also their partners. Over the past 24 months, a large shift in the program has been the opportunity, from a bad actors' perspective, into the internet and branded content arena as well.

So interesting to see that, again, these are definitely the strong areas where we're seeing the most risk from the survey.

So let's look at this real-world example. So we did our own proprietary research with our own proprietary tools, and we pulled together some data looking at the 2026 World Cup data. And I'm sure many of you would have already seen this. But it's some really interesting data, looking at all the different types of infringement that can very quickly be picked up. And, of course, the bad actors, again, are going to take advantage of that.

So we've got here fake ticket sales on platforms, fake travel and accommodation scams, fraudulent merchandise sites, streaming and media scams, which kind of leans towards more piracy, but of course, again, these are independent risks in their own right. And then giveaway and lottery scams. Really, any piece or part of the World Cup was really taken advantage of unfortunately.

Also interestingly, when we look at this, it also tells you that, if you think of this again from the bad actors' perspective, they're taking advantage of the events, and they all have their own specialization. I also recently did a webinar where we were looking at Fashion Week, and we saw a very similar example where certain fashion brands from New York and London were being targeted, and the attendees for those were being targeted along things like accommodation scams and again tickets.

So these are the types of things that bad actors are focused on. Of curse, we all understand things like the fraudulent merchandise and websites there. But these are the common areas that we're seeing again and again. And again, I'd encourage anyone to look at that report that we created on the World Cup.

Okay. Regulatory frameworks. So this is an interesting aspect of the survey as well. So essentially, those that, again, responded felt that they had a higher trust and belief in the UK AI regulatory environment. One thing that I commented on, on the survey, you'll see within the report, is actually, of course, most regulation is often behind the times on the current events, and it's often in response to. Very rarely in industries is regulation put in place ahead of time.

So essentially what you're seeing here is really a battle of multiple different jurisdictions trying to both encourage investment in these areas like AI, but also trying and restrict and look at the individual players. And again, I think what we're looking at here is certain key markets having a belief that they'll be able to stop that and put certain barriers in. We've seen similar legislation go into certain jurisdictions recently with social media, the UK being a notable one and Australia. And we're seeing the same now with the AI Act. How these will actually come out, whether there will be, as we've seen with some of the recent EU legislation, the fine base or through other legal methods, we'll have to see. But it's definitely interesting to see that these are still on everyone's minds as AI continues to allow people to scale and weaponize attacks. And again, I think really the reverse of what we're looking at here is looking at how much scale are people using AI today.

Okay. Top five risks of IP infringement as well. So it's quite interesting. Of course, what do people think of first and foremost is the business. You think about money. So the vast majority of the respondents were thinking about that. But, of course, there's the other areas, things like reputational damage. Also that affecting the commercial partnerships that you have there. You've got that on the fourth line. And then regulatory issues and penalties. And then, finally, things like customer losses.

Of course, again, this depends on the individual industry vertical that you're working in. But we all have to kind of have to ask ourselves: "Is this something that's going to affect my end customer? Or is this something that's going to affect my partner, my business partner? Is this something that's going to affect the other businesses that are within the network?" So there are lots of different ways that this can actually come to impact the organization as a whole. But interestingly that, again, revenue and financial loss was definitely at the top of the list.

Okay. So one area we also looked at within the survey was looking at new gTLD expansion. And, of course, new gTLDS can also mean new opportunities for abuses. So organizations are concerned about monitoring those. And it adds another layer of complexity onto the level of domain name monitoring. Again, I would encourage all of you to watch our 3D monitoring webinar that we did with Lan, looking at multiple levels of the domain names and how we look at things like new, re-regis, and dropped.

But interestingly, when you look at new gTLDs, you can see here there's a broad span of different types of issues. Are people worried about the cost of having to defend those new registrations? Because almost any of those new registrations can be picked up by any third party. Are they worried about having to enforce against their brand and their rights in doing so in reaction to those events happening ? So it could actually be contentious on some of those domains that are registered as well. So, of course, this new opportunity for organizations can actually create opportunities for bad actors as well.

Okay. Again, looking at AI exposure, so put simply, a lot of people are exposed to this. But when they actually were surveyed to it, they would say "highly" and "extremely" exposed. And I think, again, when we think about the roles that the individuals are that we surveyed across these large organizations, they are essentially responding back and saying, "I believe that I'm highly exposed and here's the reasons why." And again, it comes back to the survey results we saw before about things like compliance and looking at whether the organization is in with its own compliance standards, but also what they're then seeing externally as well.

This was an interesting question that was raised. How is AI currently used in your organization's IP protection efforts? Meaning actually protecting themselves. And again, I think this says a lot about the responders, but to say "moderate use" is quite interesting. So I think what they're saying is they're using it, but they're perhaps not using it as much as they possibly can.

And, of course, AI can be used in a number of different areas. Here at CSC, we have our own hybrid AI strategy, where we use both our own proprietary AI but also use that with machine analysis tools, which are driven by humans, keeping humans in the loop. And one of the things that you can do with that is really take advantage of the scalability of AI, but also you want to make sure that the trigger, as it were, is always kept with the humans.

Very interesting to see that people actually think that they've got moderate use. So yeah, that was an interesting statistic.

Okay. Looking at top challenges of these as well. So operational, it's quite interesting. So I think slow enforcement process, this is quite interesting as well. So looking at how that can slow down the process of actually tackling these IP infringements. The main reason of that, of course, if many of you don't know, would be making sure that the right people are in the right spots to make sure that they're approving these takedowns. You don't want to be doing something shooting from the hip, as it were. You want to make sure that you are appropriately engaging in the right topics with the right people, whether that be your digital governance team, and then also you're working with partners, like CSC, to ensure you are taking the most potent but also reasonable course of action to remediate the case that you have. So if you have a certain threat, you want to make sure that you can get it removed quickly and efficiently. You don't want that in drawn-out process.

Interesting small teams and lack of staff was also noted. And then high volumes of activity was also put in there. I think probably the most notable there is definitely the slow enforcement processes.

Okay. And then the final point here, before we move into next steps, is looking at how much AI is used within the monitoring again. And again, at CSC, we definitely encourage you to look at things like some of the technology that we use day to day with our analyst teams for monitoring enforcement. But the question posed was, "What percentage of your online IP infringement monitoring is done with AI?" So it's a relatively modest amount of use. Again, I think with all of the compliance training we're all doing, with all of the risk we're trying to mitigate across the organization, I think that's natural. But it is an interesting statistic nonetheless that not more 50% of people believe that they're using this as part of their AI for their monitoring and enforcement.

Recommended Actions. So a strategic action plan, first and foremost, automating monitoring. Use technology where it can be used best. Gather all of that data and get the broadest whole landscape of data that you can as well.

Then looking at the high-risk platforms, where possible also using like heat mapping and identifying where you're seeing these top platforms that are affecting the organization and affecting the IP. If you can plot out those highest risks, you will get a typical Pareto distribution, where you'll find that 80% of your problems come from 20% of the places that you're monitoring for.

Third, seller investigations. So where you are seeing or identifying individual bad actors, do a deeper dive into those. And what you'll often see, as we mentioned before, is you'll see them on multiple different areas. So you'll not only see them on marketplaces, but you might also see them on independent domain names as well.

Where possible, increase consumer awareness. Of course, any education you can give out to your wider network is always beneficial.

Takedown prioritization as well. And again, making sure that you're using the right methods at the right time. That's why, at CSC, we use our enforcement toolbox. So we tailor those methods at the right point.

And the, finally, marketplace collaboration. Many of you might be going to INTA or IACC. I'll see you there. When you are there, do have a conversation with these marketplaces. There might be a new initiative. There might be a new part of their IPR structure that allows you to be able to enforce those cases that historically you haven't. If not, it always good to just have those conversations and increase dialogue as well.