Interview: CVAN - The Ultimate Solution for Online IP Protection

We sat down with Pietro Gagliano, Head of the Corsearch LABS, to discuss CVAN, a new solution designed to revolutionize online brand and intellectual property (IP) protection.

Pietro provides key insights into how this powerful, platform-native solution is positioned to tackle the overwhelming challenge of counterfeiting and other IP violations, offering platforms and brands unprecedented precision and efficiency.

We’ll explore the massive scale of the counterfeiting problem, the limitations of current manual processes, and the unique, multifaceted approach of CVAN and what it means for brands and platforms alike.

About Pietro

Pietro Gagliano is a leading voice in the world of Brand Protection and serves on the INTA Anti-Counterfeiting Committee Leadership Team and is an active member of the sustainability and enforcement committees for Indicam, ACG, and Andema.

The Core Problem: Lack of Knowledge

Corsearch: Let's start with the basics. What is CVAN, in one sentence?

Pietro: CVAN is a platform native solution designed to help marketplaces and social media platforms to move away from a reactive, purely risk based and therefore low precision approach, to a proactive and highly precise brand specific protection system.

Corsearch: What is the primary goal of online Brand Protection, and how does CVAN help achieve it?

Pietro: Ultimately, our goal is to minimize the platform's risk exposure by reducing the visibility of infringing content online as much as possible. We firmly believe that CVAN is the ultimate solution needed to achieve this as, after years of intense development, it’s designed to analyze large volumes of data using specific brand knowledge to provide recommendations to the platforms with a 99%+ level of precision.

Corsearch: How does CVAN support platforms, like marketplaces and social media?

Pietro: We recognize that platforms are already making efforts to proactively remove infringing content using their own measures. CVAN isn't about replacing those efforts; it's about providing an additional layer of support.

This supplementary tool allows platforms to significantly increase the recall and precision of the measures they already have in place. While platforms are doing their best, there's a critical gap in their approach - CVAN is designed specifically to fill it.

Corsearch: You mentioned a "gap." What exactly is missing from the platforms' current protection efforts?

Pietro: The core issue is that platforms fundamentally lack product knowledge and product expertise, as they simply don't have the intimate information required to reliably tell what's fake and what's not.

CVAN’s Unique Technological Advantage

Corsearch: So how does CVAN solve this knowledge gap?

Pietro: CVAN uses specific product knowledge to achieve higher coverage and analyse content with the highest precision on the platform. It’s a new way for platforms to analyse content leveraging specific knowledge that would be impossible for any human team to manage at scale.

Corsearch: What makes CVAN unique in the market compared to other solutions?

Pietro: CVAN is the only solution that works proactively for platforms, even for VLOPs where we process extremely large volumes of listings. This is CVAN’s key differentiator, a balanced combination of scalable technology and knowledge.

Today, CVAN is the only solution working with both brands and platforms to finally create a real link between the two, making a concrete step forward in helping the industry come together in the fight against illicit trade.

The Scale of the Problem and Precision

Corsearch: Let's talk about the scale of the problem we are dealing with. Is counterfeiting really such a significant issue?

Pietro: The market has ballooned to be five to six times bigger than it was just 10 years ago. To give you perspective, the total value of the counterfeit market today is equivalent to the GDP of Ireland. Or to put it another way, counterfeits make up the value of the whole aviation industry.

^{Source: Statista}

This problem is so entrenched that the current manual methods being used by platforms are essentially "wishful thinking". These approaches rely on training analysts to manually review tens of thousands of listings and this model is unsustainable, as you would need an army of experts who could work tirelessly without making any mistakes.

The financial impact is shocking as the counterfeit revenue stream for criminal organizations has actually surpassed that of the drug trade - criminal organizations are making more money from counterfeits than from cocaine today. This emphasizes the absolute necessity for a powerful technological solution like CVAN to achieve a new reality where removing a counterfeit item is cheaper than listing one.

Tangible ROI and Comprehensive Use Cases

Corsearch: What are the tangible returns on investment (ROI) that platforms can expect from implementing CVAN?

Pietro: We see two very clear areas of ROI: risk mitigation and operational efficiency.

Risk Mitigation and Cost Reduction

Platforms are constantly facing lawsuits because illegal content appears on their sites, leading to litigation costs that can reach millions or even hundreds of millions. CVAN is designed to help them mitigate this huge cost and significantly reduce their overall liability risk by implementing a powerful, technology-based, proactive solution.

Operational Efficiency

Platforms receive a torrent of notices for takedown from companies like Corsearch and they need to dedicate large teams just to check and process these notices every day. Because CVAN is a platform-native solution, every recommendation is perfectly tailored to the platform's own rules, terms, and conditions. Our experience shows that the internal effort required from the platform's side to process this information can drop by up to 95%.

Corsearch: What is the reach of CVAN? Does it only apply to large, established platforms?

Pietro: The solution is built to work at a massive scale. We work with over 5,000 brands across 1,500 different platforms worldwide, meaning we are processing hundreds of millions of listings monthly.

However, the benefits are critical for platforms of all sizes. For an emerging platform, a massive litigation case can mean the difference between survival or failure. We support smaller platforms from day one to ensure they are shielded from unexpected legal or financial risks.

Ultimately, CVAN allows any platform to prepare for an eventual surge in volume without simultaneously having to deal with an equivalent surge in risk.

Corsearch: Let's focus on the full scope of violations. You've focused a lot on counterfeit, but what is the full spectrum of protection CVAN provides?

Pietro: It's vital to clarify this point, we don't just do anti-counterfeiting, we provide comprehensive IP protection. CVAN works for any kind of IP violation.

This means we cover Counterfeit, but also Copyright, Trademark, Design, and Patent.

CVAN is a platform-native product that goes beyond the core of IP as we support two other critical use cases that protect the platform’s integrity and limit its liability:

Terms and Conditions Violations

We protect the platform from sellers misusing the site by listing prohibited items, such as tobacco (even genuine products) on a platform where it is forbidden. CVAN ensures compliance with the platform’s own rules.

Product Safety

We help ensure that products recalled from the market (like unsafe children's strollers) are removed. This is extremely serious, as failing to remove a recalled product is a criminal offense for the marketplace, which is far more severe than a civil counterfeit claim. Our work takes counterfeit off the platform's table so they can focus on what truly matters, which is product safety, where the risks are highest.

Corsearch: How much better is the technology than current manual moderation?

Pietro: The numbers speak for themselves. The previous, people-based approach is simply not sustainable as you’d typically bring in an army of human manpower, try to train them on your product, and have them manually process every infringement - which leads to mistakes.

A very well-trained human moderator is operating at a precision of only around 95%. Our level of precision with CVAN is above 98%, close to 99%.

That 4% shift in precision is enormous, when you are processing hundreds of millions of listings, it saves millions of mistakes. Our machine learning models are better equipped because they are more precise, they don’t get tired, and they never forget crucial product details.

Our goal is to make selling counterfeits online an almost impossible task.

Corsearch: Finally, we've covered the benefits for brands and platforms. How does this ultimately benefit the consumer?

Pietro: Every element of our solution, from mitigating risk to ensuring operational efficiency, ultimately trickles down to consumer safety.

By rigorously ensuring a product is not counterfeit, not in violation of safety standards, and not illegally listed, CVAN supports the overall safety and trust of the online environment.

No consumer should be able to unknowingly purchase a recalled, unsafe product, and CVAN in conjunction with Corsearch works to prevent that reality.