A name and an address
A real identity behind an anonymous seller, storefront, domain or account, lawfully obtained.
Brands and trade marks
Infringer identification.
You can know exactly what is being done to you and still have nobody to write to. A storefront with no company behind it, a domain behind a privacy service, an account that closes and reopens under a new name. Until there is a real person or a real company with a real address, everything else is theoretical.
What this looks like when it goes wrong
The commonest position is a business that has been fighting the symptom for a long time. Notices are sent, listings come down, accounts vanish and equivalents appear. The activity is real and continuous and there is nobody on the other side of it. The company is spending money on removal because removal is the only thing it can do without a name.
The second is a business that has treated one operation as though it were many. Many sellers, many separate complaints, and a small decision each time about whether that one is worth pursuing. Every one of them looks too small to act on, and taken together they are a single business with an infrastructure behind it and a proper claim available against it.
The third is a demand sent to whatever name appears on a listing. It reaches a person with no assets, or a company that dissolves and is replaced almost immediately, or somebody who was never anything more than a fulfilment address. Money is spent, something is signed, and the activity continues from the same place under a different label.
The fourth is the one nobody expects. The operation turns out to be connected to somebody already inside the picture: a former distributor, a licensee working outside its terms, a manufacturer running a second line, a departed employee. The moment that is established the matter stops being an enforcement problem and becomes a contract problem, which is usually faster and considerably cheaper.
What actually decides it
How this work is done is not described here, on this page or in a meeting. It is the part of the practice that is genuinely proprietary and it stays that way. What can be said is what identification is for, because that is the part that decides whether it is worth commissioning at all. Everything below concerns outcomes, not method.
Identification converts a removal into a remedy. Without a name, the only available response is asking a platform to take something down. With one, the whole ordinary range opens: correspondence that reaches a decision maker, an agreement that binds a real party, proceedings that can be served, and a judgment that can be enforced against something. Proceedings against unnamed defendants are possible in some circumstances, but the route is narrower and more expensive than acting against a party you can name.
It also tells you whether the matter is one matter. Establishing that a set of apparently unrelated sellers share an operator changes the arithmetic entirely, because the scale of what is happening becomes provable and a claim that was uneconomic against any single seller becomes plainly worth bringing against the whole. The reverse finding is just as useful. A genuinely isolated seller is usually a reason to stop.
The last two things it establishes are the ones that decide whether to proceed. Whether there is anything to recover, because a claim against an entity with nothing behind it produces a piece of paper and a bill. And where the other side actually sits, because that decides which courts are available, what enforcement will look like and whether a judgment obtained in one place means anything where the assets are. All of it has to be obtained lawfully and in a form that can be used, which is a constraint on the work and the reason its results hold up.
What we do
One operation or many
Whether apparently separate sellers share a controller, and how large the activity really is.
Whether there is anything there
The asset position behind the name, so a claim is brought against something rather than nothing.
Where they sit
The jurisdictional picture, which decides what can be brought, where, and whether it can be enforced.
Evidence that survives
Findings delivered in a form that stands up if the matter is contested or has to be proved.
When to stop
A straight answer where identification would cost more than any remedy it makes available.
When to spend nothing
The test is simple and it should be applied before anything begins. If you would not act on the answer, do not buy the answer. Where the activity is small, occasional and causing no measurable harm, a name changes nothing except the sense of resolution, and that is an expensive thing to buy.
It is also worth waiting until there is enough to act on. Identifying a single seller in isolation is frequently the least valuable moment to do it, because the picture is incomplete and the operation carries on around the one part that has been exposed. Where the same problem is recurring, letting it accumulate briefly and then dealing with the whole of it at once produces a far better outcome than reacting to each instance as it appears.
Brands and trade marks
More on brands and trade marks
- Trade marks
- Copycats and counterfeits
- Design rights
- Oppositions and disputes
- Brand enforcement
- Portfolio strategy
Before anything is sent
Positions harden the moment the other side takes advice, and the quiet routes stop being available once a demand has gone out. While nothing has been sent, everything is still open.