3M’s pandemic battle against fraudulent health care equipment

Since the beginning of the pandemic, global company 3M, a key supplier of PPE in health care, has seen a dramatic increase in production of counterfeit products, including respirators and masks amongst other protective equipment.

3M’s trade mark chief, Colette Durst, claimed that by the beginning of 2020, it was clear that the company’s intellectual property team needed restructuring, replacing their previously broad approach with a COVID-19 specific one.  3M, with the aim of increasing online enforcement of the trade mark and protecting consumers from buying misleading products, teamed up with brand protection company Incorpro to tackle the increasing violations.

In addition to trade mark infringement, 3M were also alerted to email phishing from domains almost identical to their own, targeting healthcare providers offering infringing PPE, using the company’s logo and names of employees to enforce the illusion of authenticity. Working with domain name registrars, 3M acted to remove many of the infringing domains and Durst now claims the company is able to act in a more ‘proactive’ manner through implementation of a dedicated ‘COVID fraud’ website, informing consumers of the issues surrounding counterfeit products and providing updates on their genuine lines.

Additionally, the company also introduced a new, streamlined tier review system. All reported trade mark violations to 3Ms intellectual property team initially enter tier one, whereby staff across global service centres collect further documentation. Reports are then passed into tier two where they are assessed and acted upon accordingly.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 3M have successfully removed around 15,000 infringing e-commerce listings and 16,000 deceptive social media posts.

Ellie King