Meta aims to help brands better protect their intellectual property rights across its apps, which is a critical step in enabling more commerce activity and onboarding more brands with its broader shopping initiatives.
First, Meta is rolling out some improvements to its Brand Rights Protection Manager tool, which can be accessed in its Business Manager app.
Originally launched in March of last year (as ‘Commerce & Ads IP tool‘), Brand Rights Protection Manager allows companies to upload images of their licensed products, which Meta’s systems can then use as a reference point for similar match detection to highlight potential usage violations in page posts, marketplace listings, etc.
Now Meta is adding new features to the tool including automated takedowns for brands with a strong reporting history, improved alert recommendations based on advanced detection, and the ability for content owners to upload a list of Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts authorized to use product images to limit false positives.
Meta has also expanded its search tools within Rights Protection Manager, allowing for a broader view of more types of content, Also added the ability to search using Facebook and Instagram URLs and IDs.
Brands can now also target and report Facebook Groups, Pages and profiles in the app, as well as Instagram accounts and posts on Facebook and Instagram.
There is also a new element dedicated to combat Brand identity:
“Brands can now report potentially infringing ads, Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts just for identity theft, or also for counterfeiting, trademark or copyright infringement. This update improves our ability to proactively detect and remove impersonating content.”
Finally, Meta’s also added a new Insights dashboard for Brand Rights Protection, showing the last 90 days of submitted reports and subsequent actions taken.
On another, more advanced front, Meta is also launching a new one API to report intellectual propertywhich will enable rightsholders to more efficiently identify and report content that they believe infringes their intellectual property rights.
As explained by Meta:
“With the new IP Reporting API, rights owners can automate the reporting of content they believe infringes their intellectual property rights. The tool integrates into our existing one Graph API, which is the primary method for apps to read and write the Facebook Social Graph. This integration allows authorized API users to more effectively fill in the same fields that exist in the IP Reporting Forms in a safe and streamlined manner, making this process more efficient by allowing users to report content at scale.”
Given the development resources required to implement it, it’s a higher-value rights management option that gives larger retailers another way to better detect and remediate incidents of rights violations, which could help them better enforce their rights across the app.
These updates could also impact Facebook Marketplace and counterfeit resellers or sellers in this space. So far, Meta’s rights tools don’t seem to be slowing down trading in this regard, but improved auto-detection could potentially change that and help detect such violations.
As mentioned earlier, scammer and counterfeit detection is a key element as Meta looks to push for more commercial activity in its apps to protect users, fight fraud and align with retailer expectations.
These are some good updates that take advantage of Meta’s advanced visual identification tools in multiple ways, which could be a big step in improving its trade listings.
You can learn more about protecting trademark rights herewhile you can request access to the Brand Rights Protection Manager at this link.
