Talk:Markmonitor/Draft

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MarkMonitor, Inc. develops Internet brand protection software and services. It was founded in Boise, Idaho in 1999. Today it is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in Boise, London and Washington DC. Over half of the Fortune 100 are clients of MarkMonitor, as are AAA, Facebook, Google, and the Wikimedia Foundation. It has software products for domain management, anti-fraud, brand protection and anti-piracy.

The company conducts routine research about trademark, counterfeit, and copyright issues. MarkMonitor was active in discussions around ICANN’s move to create new domain names, and has remained neutral on SOPA.

History
MarkMonitor was founded by James Hepworth and Faisal Shah in Boise, Idaho in 1999. Hepworth and Shah were early adopters at recognizing the Internet and its content would become a new market for intellectual property protection. The company was originally branded as “online brand protection.” In the mid-2000’s it was referred to as security “outside the firewall.” Today the company again refers to its products as “online brand protection.” When the company was first founded it was focused exclusively on protecting corporate trademarks online, but grew into more services over time. MarkMonitor acquired a domain management business in 2001, and an anti-piracy company in 2010.

Research
MarkMonitor is a software and services vendor, not a research company, but they do routinely conduct research on issues related to their business such as counterfeit products, domain squatting, intellectual property and trademark violations in their Brandjacking Indexes. These studies have found:


 * More than 23,000 listings of suspected counterfeits of five tablet makers across 23 online stores.


 * 6,000 suspects selling more than 1.2 million counterfeit sports apparels from five major leagues for a total of $25 million.


 * Hotels lose $1.9 billion annually from legal “brandjacking” practices by partners and competitors. One example is a travel agent using searches on a major hotel to capture prospects that would have otherwise gone directly to their hotel partner.


 * 1,251 websites contain one of five examined luxury brands in their domain URL and 56 suspects were placing search ads to divert traffic from the luxury brand’s legitimate website to their counterfeit goods site. The company also identified 1,432 sellers of suspicious goods with a combined 3,590 listings for the five brand names on 10 auction and classifieds sites.


 * Out of 3,000 online pharmacies offering swine flu cures during the 2009 epidemic, only four were certified by the National Association Boards of Pharmacy.


 * Out of 53 billion visits analyzed across 100 websites, there were 51 million visitors to sites selling fake prescription drugs and 87 million to sites selling fake products.


 * One in seven brand-driven paid search clicks are driven to a location in violation of trademark law, affiliate agreements or the DMCA.


 * In 2009 phishing attacks through social networking sites increased 240 percent over the prior year and attacks on payment services rose 285 percent.


 * MarkMonitor identified an increase of an illegal injection called “Barbie Jab”, a drug sold in the UK that gives users a tan.

Corporate
MarkMonitor collaborates with almost a dozen anti-phishing, anti-counterfeiting and intellectual property organizations like the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC), International Trademark Association (INTA), and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).

Board members
MarkMonitor board members include: Irfan Salim, President and CEO, MarkMonitor; Dave Barrett, general partner, Polaris Venture Partners; Stephen J. Harrick, managing director and partner, Institutional Venture Partners; Jim Sayre, president, Cargill Ventures; and Warren Weiss, general partner, Foundation Capital. In 2009 MarkMonitor added Susan Whiting, Vice Chair of the Nielsen Companies to its board of directors. In 2012 Warren Jenson, CFO of Acxiom, also joined the board.

Controversy
In 2011 ICANN made a controversial move to create new top-level domain names like .CANON or .camera. MarkMonitor was active in the public discussion around fears of increased cybersquatting and participated in ICANN’s comment and review process.

MarkMonitor has remained neutral on SOPA. The company says they support legislation that protects the rights of intellectual property and trademark owners, without harming the free and open internet. MarkMonitor research has been used by pro-SOPA backers like the US Chamber of Commerce to establish the level of existing copyright infringement. As a result, some have criticized the research as obvious or flawed or scrutinized the use of the data to support SOPA. None of the research by MarkMonitor advocates a specific policy or government action, but does establish how prolific certain copyright issues are.

Software and services
MarkMonitor develops and markets brand protection software and services to combat counterfeiting, piracy, cybersquatting and paid search scams in four categories; domain management, antifraud software, brand protection and antipiracy. 22 percent of the top 500 websites have domains registered with MarkMonitor. The antifraud software finds and shuts down illegal websites and brand protection software helps shut down sites selling counterfeit goods or cybersquatters. MarkMonitor acquired antipiracy software with the acquisition of DetcNet in 2010.