Automated discovery of brand piracy on the Internet

The Internet has become a key instrument for establishing and promoting product brands. Companies are very interested in detecting any misuse of their logos, plagiarism, grey imports, and slander campaigns to protect the reputation of their brands. So-called brand protection is very costly and requires a great expenditure of human resources especially when concerning electronic media. This article describes a software architecture that enables flexible observation and examination of Internet content regarding e.g. unauthorized use of logos, damage to brand names or shady sales offers. These algorithms check Web content over several steps including a semantic analysis. The described system can be flexibly adjusted to specific monitoring tasks and inquiry orders to serve Internet detectives as an effective tool.