Going After The Big Fish – IP Enforcement

The advent and subsequent proliferation of the internet in India has been a boon as well as a curse for intellectual property enforcement. On one hand, it has become quite easy to spot infringements – especially considering how blatantly some people advertise their infringing wares and trade marks / trade names online. Which is quite mindboggling, considering just how easy and convenient it is to find out about intellectual property rights existing in a particular brand name, especially so for bigger brand names. On the other hand, such an easy availability of information and leads has bred a sense of complacency with respect to intellectual property enforcement – why delve deep into the very existence and the core source of the infringing goods when it is more convenient and easy to take down 50 small vendors committing infringement? The above sentences can be made clearer by two quite unambiguous terms – Big Fish and Small Fish.