Combating counterfeits of Procter & Gamble products and the efforts of the legal department

The law departments of companies with famous and valuable brands spend time combating counterfeit products. Actually, to varying degrees all companies protect their key brands and protect them as vigilantly as they believe is warranted. When you’re Procter & Gamble with 350 lawyers, the intellectual property to be guarded of its well-known brands deserves special attention. It gets it, according to Deborah Platt Majoras, P&G’s General Counsel, who describes some of the efforts in SuperLawyers, Bus. Ed. 2011 at 191.

The P&G legal team works with governments to find counterfeiters and pays special attention to online sellers of fake products. As I read the description of tasks, it seems yet again that the legal component (counsel and interpretation) matters less than the operational details (process, training, communication) (See my post of Oct. 11, 2008: role of law departments in anti-counterfeiting.).