Practice Overview

Strategy

Brand protection is handled differently in different cultures. In China and most developing nations a personal connection is essential to achieving effective results. While Westerners are used to simply filing paperwork and then waiting for inevitable results, much of the rest of the world incorporates greater discretion than we are used to. One must make a case for strong action and that case must be made to the right people and in the right way.

Doing this, and doing this successfully, is what Emergent IP Consulting does best.

This ability, coupled with the knowledge of what actions work best in a particular jurisdiction, allows Emergent IP Consulting to provide effective brand protection support almost anywhere in the developing world.

Investigations

Action based on anything less than accurate intelligence is fundamentally faulty. Gathering and analyzing incoming intelligence is a complicated and difficult process. Years of experience investigating IP violations at every level have prepared Emergent IP Consulting to obtain the clearest and best possible information about the criminals violating a brands rights.

Enforcement

Your intellectual property rights are valuable. And in the modern global economy that means that someone is out there scheming to misuse these rights and illegally profit off them.

Two decades of experience in enforcing these rights against counterfeiters and criminals have shown that it is absolutely key to keep business realities in mind when protecting IP. Too often brands and law firms will treat a legal victory as the end of the enforcement process. When, in reality, it is usually only the beginning.

An unenforceable legal judgement – regardless of the size of the judgement – is no victory. And in many nations globally, most judgements against counterfeiters are effectively unenforceable.

Counterfeiters are criminals, and they do not play by the rules. They can often easily close down one company and reopen another the same day when they need to avoid paying the price for their crimes. This can easily make a traditional legal approach to enforcing intellectual property rights meaningless.

A business reality based approach to enforcement, however, can almost always work.

By analyzing and targeting the key economic factors that either allow or prevent a counterfeiting criminal enterprise from being profitable a brand can eliminate the commercial incentives in violating your intellectual property rights.

This results in an end to IP theft and the dilution of your brand.

Attorney Profile

William Mansfield

Principal Attorney & Owner

William Mansfield has worked in the field of intellectual property rights enforcement since 1999. Prior to that year, he served with the U.S. Army as both a paratrooper and in a military intelligence capacity. Upon leaving the service he completed an undergraduate degree in Psychology at Purdue University.

Building upon his training Mr. Mansfield initially joined the I.P. industry as an undercover investigator working for a 3rd party vendor providing trademark investigation services for numerous multinational brand owners. He then rose in the organization to build and manage the comprehensive investigation and enforcement programs for various clients. During this time Mr. Mansfield earned a law degree from Indiana University and eventually became the general counsel of the company.

For the past decade, William Mansfield has been the Director of Intellectual Property for a small FMCGs company that sells primarily in the developing world. In that capacity, he oversaw the expansion of trademark coverage for the company from 1,200 to over 2,000 registered trademarks worldwide. He has traveled to 56 countries in his professional capacity and directed actions in over 120 countries.

A major part of his work has been the aggressive and strategic targeting of major sources and distributors of infringing products originating in China. Just as China is a source for vast amounts of licensed and lawful products that are sold globally, it is also the source point for many counterfeit goods. Over the past decade, Mr. Mansfield has learned how to best make the Chinese intellectual property protection system work for the protection of his in-house brand.

Mr. Mansfield has been further certified in various areas of brand protection and anticounterfeiting by the international police organization INTERPOL, the World Intellectual Property Association, Michigan State University’s Center for Anti-Counterfeiting and Protect Protection and the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. Mr. Mansfield has earned an M.B.A. from Indiana University and focuses his studies on how to better identify weak points in the illicit supply chains used by counterfeiters and disrupt their illegal enterprises.

Mr. Mansfield has recently begun taking in outside clients interested in his assistance with brand protection in China and the developing world through his new company, Emergent IP Consulting.