IPOPHL helps brand owners learn ways to protect their IPs on TikTok Shop

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The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) recently held an IP Boot Camp with TikTok Shop, which allowed brand owners to learn about the platform’s intellectual property (IP) policies and IP Protection Center (IPPC).

The IP Boot Camp is an IPOPHL initiative aimed at enabling IP rights holders to leverage IP portals of e-commerce platforms that are mostly signatories to the E-Commerce Memorandum of Understanding. The information sessions also provide a venue for IP owners to offer insights on how these portals can be improved to better respond to their needs.

“With TikTok Shop’s vast and fast growing user base, an information session with them is key to helping brand owners and their legal teams have a tailored strategy in line with platforms’ specific IP framework and enforcement processes. This also allows TikTok Shop and brand owners to explore better ways of working hand in hand in combating counterfeits online,” IP Rights Enforcement Office Supervising Director Christine V. Pangilinan-Canlapan said at the event held in February 2024.

Across Southeast Asia, more than 325 million people come to TikTok every month, with around 15 million businesses using the platform.

Brand Cooperation Manager of TikTok’s E-commerce IP Rights Protection Team James Cheah said TikTok Shop revolutionized e-commerce by combining shopping with entertainment, creating “shoppertainment” for consumers to enjoy fun, short-form content and live streamed videos which influence their purchasing decisions.

However, TikTok Shop also acknowledges the greater challenges of providing sellers new and exciting ways to engage with consumers  beyond traditional marketing, which only harnesses text descriptions and images in listings.

“This adds an extra dimension of monitoring with respect to protecting IP. This added dimension means we don’t just look into the individual products sold or keywords used. We also have to look into how their other content, including videos and live streams, might be using or misusing IP,” Cheah said.

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To address these challenges, TikTok Shop built its IPPC, which provides rights holders an integrated one-stop platform to protect and enforce their IP rights.

“We have invested significant resources, engineering resources, product resources to build up this portal and also build a strong specialist operations team to manage and run it,”  Global E-Commerce IP Protection Operation Manager Zinia Ang said, noting that while machine-learning algorithms allow faster and larger-scale detection of potentially infringing content, the decision to act on take-down requests or refuse them still rests on human resources.

TikTok Shop encouraged IP rights holders on the platform to sign up to its IPPC. The IPPC includes an IP Vault that stores all documents proving a business’ or individual’s ownership over an IP. The IP Vault activates the product search function in relevant jurisdictions and allows a wider global search for monitoring.

The IPPC also provides a system for complaints management, specifically for rights owners to notify, track and manage take-down requests and monitor appeals.

When onboard the IPPC, rights holders benefit from a streamlined take-down system which would take a maximum of two working days compared to TikTok’s broader monitoring system. The latter looks into listings that violate the platform’s overall community standards and policies and, thus, may take a longer period of time to act on take-down requests, except in cases that put risk to public health and other matters of national concern.

As the newest member of the E-Commerce Memorandum on Understanding, TikTok Shop also shed light on its work in helping brand owners beyond the regular track of requesting a take-down of infringing listings. They shared how they may cooperate with brand owners in providing information of infringers that potentially operate and attract sales of counterfeit products on a larger scale.

In streamlining coordination with investigating and enforcement authorities, Cheah also shared that TikTok Shop has a Law Enforcement Response Team dedicated to coordinating with authorities and supporting any request made by law enforcement to help with the investigations.

He also revealed that TikTok Shop will soon roll out new measures that will enable its IPPC to broaden its monitoring scope, noting that the IP monitoring investments are crucial to the platform as it ensures the protection of IP rights and the preservation of consumer trust which drives 70% of its users’ purchasing decisions.

“That trust element is incredibly valuable to us as a platform. Maintaining strong integrity around IP protection is a core competence in maintaining that high degree of trust which… helps [our users] feel comfortable in making purchases when they’re buying authentic products and to make them feel happy to come back in the future,” Cheah added. (Janina Lim/IPOPHL)