Category - "Fraud"

Hoisting Scammers with Their Own Petard with the UDRP

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With the widespread availability of domain registration and hosting services and the advent of low-cost generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) software, the creation of fraudulent websites has never been easier—or more convincing. With little more effort than a few prompts of an AI program, scammers are able to quickly set up seemingly legitimate websites with text, images, and even video that can look and sound like the real thing. Online consumers, even those savvy enough to recognize your typical email phishing scam, may be fooled by professional-looking websites imitating existing businesses and organizations for less than savory reasons.

For brand owners, the consequences of these imitators can be myriad, including a loss of brand control, irate consumers looking for someone to blame, and ultimately a hit to your bottom line. Indeed, according to the FBI’s 2023 Internet Crime Report, Americans reported over $7.5 billion in losses stemming from intellectual property-related cybercrimes in 2023, up from 2022. Adding to this problem is the fact enforcing your rights against scammer sites can be costly and time-consuming. Scammers themselves are often anonymous and unsurprisingly unlikely to make themselves readily identifiable or easy to track down. Domain registrars and web hosts may require brand owners to navigate byzantine reporting channels in order to flag problematic conduct. And the resources required attempting to litigate every offending domain in court can make it an untenable option for many.

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NO FAKES Here: A New Tool to Protect Against the Misuse of AI?

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What do Scarlett Johansson, Drake, The Weeknd, and Taylor Swift have in common (besides being among this millennial’s fav celebs)?  They all have the distinct displeasure of becoming a target of deepfake technology – a type of AI that creates fake, but highly realistic-looking audio, images, or videos using the likeness and/or voice of its victim.

While there are certainly positive uses of deepfake technology (Val Kimer’s AI-generated voice in his reprisal of “Iceman” in Top Gun Maverick comes to mind),1 the widespread potential for abuse and malicious use, from fake musical performances, to fake political robocalls, to pornographic content, is top of mind for the entertainment industry, politicians, and ordinary folk alike.

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Make your Company a Hard Target for Job Scams

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Your company’s talent is its lifeblood. Job postings for qualified individuals and other recruitment activities are vital to its operations. What happens, then, when scammers disrupt your business by conducting phishing schemes to trick individuals into applying for nonexistent jobs you did not post with the objective of stealing their personally identifiable information? In the age of remote work and virtual hiring, the impersonation of companies in job recruitment scams has become increasingly prevalent.

It can be difficult for job seekers to recognize a recruitment outreach as a scam, particularly when they’re highly interested in the opportunity. Therefore, it is incumbent upon companies to take steps to mitigate or stop the potential for harm. Leveraging company intellectual property is crucial to combating such schemes and to protecting both job seekers and the company’s good name.

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The Ninth Circuit Just Provided a Roadmap On How to Defend California Consumer Fraud Claims

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Companies that may face consumer fraud claims in West Coast courts will want to take a close look at the Ninth Circuit’s decision this month in McGinity v. Procter & Gamble Co., __ F.4th __, 2023 WL 3911531 (9th Cir. June 9, 2023).  The Ninth Circuit provided some much-needed clarity on how lower courts within its jurisdiction should reconcile two seemingly conflicting precedents on how to apply the “reasonable consumer” test to seemingly fanciful claims brought under California’s consumer fraud laws.

Seven years ago, in the pro-defense Ebner v. Fresh, Inc., 838 F.3d 958 (9th Cir. 2016), the Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of claims that the weight indicator on a tube of lip balm was misleading because some of the balm sits in the tube’s screw mechanism and thus is basically unusable.  In the legalese equivalent of “give me a break,” the Ninth Circuit noted California state appellate precedent holding that consumer fraud claims must be dismissed if it is improbable “that a significant portion of the general consuming public or of targeted consumers, acting reasonably in the circumstances, could be misled” by the challenged practice or language, and called the plaintiff’s lip balm claims “not plausible.”  Id. at 965.  The Ebner decision basically counseled district judges to be on the lookout for, and be ready to dismiss, a plaintiff’s allegations that reflect, at best, the reading “an insignificant and unrepresentative segment” of purchasers might give to a challenged advertisement or language on packaging.  Id. at 966.

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Trademark Strategy as a Tool to Combat Cybercrime

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It is an all-too-common occurrence: The phone rings and a panicked client on the other end of the line has been impacted by an online fraud. Fraud on the internet is carried out daily, with new and inventive methods of attack being put into practice to mask and conceal the crime at hand until it is “too late.” While we have all learned to identify and avoid certain suspicious behaviors, bad actors continue to develop new and inventive ways to procure sensitive data, receive payments under fraudulent pretexts and otherwise perpetrate crimes with the benefit of the relative anonymity and obscurity that is afforded by the internet.

According to the 2021 report from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the IC3 alone received more than 2.75 million complaints and reported losses of $18.7 billion from 2017 to 2021. See Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Report 2021. Broader studies seeking to understand the global impact of such activities suggest total losses actually range in the hundreds of billions per year, depending on the study. Regardless of the source, one thing is clear: The cost of frauds resulting from spoofed websites designed to collect sensitive consumer data, email account compromise designed to extract payments from unwitting customers by sending apparently legitimate requests for invoice payment, and even more involved frauds are impacting clients by costing them real dollars, damaging their reputation and customer relationships, and otherwise putting a strain on their ability to conduct business.

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