Brand Protection on the Internet in Pakistan

By Zahid Jamil, CIO Pakistan
April 07, 2010 03:11 PM ET

Here's something to think about..

What if you were a customer of PIA and you went to the website www.pia.com.pk . It had the PIA logo and trade name/marks. It gave PIA Flight information. It asked you to enter your personal information (maybe even passwords) and asked you to send emails with confidential information to info@pia.com.pk. It may or may not have several ads on the website. The website offered airline tickets online. Next month you check your credit card balance online and your credit card had a huge overdue amount. (Such a spoofed website exists and is not PIA's website).

What if this was www.alfalah.com or www.dubaislamicbank.com, www.dubaiislamicbank.com or www.dib.com.pk (all these are actual websites at the time of writing of this article which do not belong to the expected/famous Pakistani trademark holder). As a customer of one of these banks if you were contacted over email and asked to verify or submit or validate information, you may click on the website in the email which may take you to one of the aforementioned websites. There they may have the same characteristics or may even be identical to the bank's website. You may enter your password for online login or account information or the branchless banking account number, pin or password. Next week you may find that the account was empty.

It's only after this that you realize that the website was a fake one. It may at the most basic level be a cyber squatter trying to monetize traffic possibly by pay per click or even worse possibly a fraudster, ID thief or someone using your account for money laundering etc. or even proxies for competitors who may wish to disparage a competitors brand.

Related Content

Brand protection is more than just trade mark/name protection in the age of the internet. It requires the brand owner to give attention to a domain name (website address) infringement just as much as a regular real life trade mark infringement (possibly even more). The FIA's Cyber crime cell (NR3C) can only help if the server or registrar of the domain name is in Pakistan. Majority are abroad. So what does a brand holder do? How does it secure itself and its customers from these risks. This brief article attempts to address in some part this issue.

Most companies and trademark holders tend to be more wary of infringement of trade mark/name protection on products, on TV and the print media. However, with much of the marketing and communication budgets being devoted especially abroad to internet, this is an important area for Pakistani companies to keep their eye on. The internet is not just used to advertise and market brands but it is becoming the preferred and more cost effective way in which to keep in touch and communicate with customers. This thus, also necessarily requires customers to trust the websites they visit and email addresses they communicate through. The most important way in which companies (brand owners) thus, acquire a web presence is through a website (domain name). Usually it is this domain name that also forms an integral part of all email communication.