What Organisations Need to Know About AI, the Cyber Underworld, and IP Infringement

WISECODE Take

Elliott Champion, Global Product Director for Brand Protection at CSC, pointed out in a World Trademark Review report on 10 October 2026 that AI technology significantly lowers the "barriers to legitimacy" for cybercriminals. Many companies assume IP defense focuses on physical counterfeits, ignoring how infringers use AI to generate convincing spoof websites and phishing domains at scale. When infringers can produce flawless multilingual sites and fake trademarks in minutes, traditional manual spot-checking fails. It is like an illegal athlete putting on an official referee uniform in sports, making it hard for consumers to tell real from fake. Businesses with purely local physical retail operations without online commerce remain largely unaffected. However, cross-border e-commerce brands risk serious reputation damage. Intellectual Property monitoring services provided by Wisdom Code can help businesses track infringing domains in real time. Two concrete steps should be taken. First, integrate key trademarks and domains into automated monitoring instead of relying on customer reports. Second, secure defensive domain registrations and trademark filings in core export markets. The key to brand protection lies in whether a company can spot fake domains faster than criminals can deploy them automatically.