From Listing to Legal: How Brand Protection Teams Document Counterfeit Cases for Counsel
Why Counterfeit Case Files Stall Between Detection and Counsel
An analyst spots a suspicious listing on a major marketplace. The logo is slightly off, the price sits at half what authorized retailers charge, and the seller opened the account six weeks ago. The analyst recognizes the pattern in minutes. The write-up for counsel then draws on browser tabs, a folder of screenshots, a price-comparison spreadsheet, and an email thread with a colleague who saw the same seller on another platform.
Pulling those pieces into a counterfeit case file means reconstructing the story from fragments. When the structure lives with individual analysts, each file starts over, and one analyst's seller identification section becomes another's appendix item. Counsel and leadership wait on the file while the marketplace portal asks for a rights-holder complaint with supporting evidence.
The OECD and EUIPO estimate in Mapping Global Trade in Fakes 2025 that counterfeit goods made up $467 billion of global trade in 2021, about 2.3% of world imports. Clothing, footwear, and leather goods made up 62% of seized counterfeit goods in the report's customs data.
This article walks through how to classify a case before documenting it, what counsel expects to see, how to build a repeatable template, and where Indago fits in the write-up. The analyst stays in control of every judgment along the way.
Counterfeit, Gray Market, or Unauthorized Resale: Classify Before You Document
Every case file starts with one question: what kind of violation is the analyst documenting? The answer shapes what the file must demonstrate, which evidence carries the most weight, and which enforcement routes are available.
Counterfeit goods bear a brand's trademark without authorization and were never made by or for the rights holder. The case file centers on showing that the mark appears on goods the brand did not produce.
Gray-market goods, also called parallel imports, are genuine branded goods sold in a market without the trademark owner's consent. INTA notes that these goods are made by or under license from the owner, which places them outside the definition of counterfeit, and that remedies depend on the jurisdiction. In the United States, both the Lanham Act and the Tariff Act provide remedies, and counsel assesses which applies.
Unauthorized resale covers genuine goods sold outside authorized distribution channels. Whether a given sale is actionable is a question for counsel, so the case file records the facts and leaves the legal conclusion open.
Marketplace programs add their own requirements. Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit page, for example, lists enrollment in Brand Registry with an active registered trademark as a requirement for brands. Other marketplaces run their own rights-holder programs, so the file should note which one applies.
Record the basis for the classification: packaging differences observed, pricing relative to authorized channels, or the brand's authorized-distributor list. Counsel makes the legal determination.
What Counsel Expects in a Counterfeit Case File
Counsel can review a counterfeit case file faster when the same information appears in the same order each time. Public guidance from the IPR Center and the Department of Justice shows what receiving parties look for. The IPR Center asks rights holders for their own details, identifiers for the alleged violator, the reason for suspicion, and the scope of the activity. A DOJ prosecutor writing in Brand Protection Professional (June 2023) advises that reports to law enforcement include the investigative steps taken so far, including efforts to preserve evidence. DOJ's guide for victims of IP crime adds sample checklists of the information to provide.
The nine elements below are a working structure for IP enforcement documentation that draws on that guidance:
Seller identification: name, account handle, contact details, and any registered business information.
Listings and dates: URLs, listing IDs, first-observed date, and any changes or removals.
Product comparison: the authentic product beside the suspect item, including packaging, labels, and quality markers.
Linked accounts and domains: related seller accounts, affiliated websites, and social profiles tied to the same actor. Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit has described sellers who list generic products in its store while promoting counterfeits to social media followers, so cross-channel links carry weight.
Channel and jurisdiction: where the listing appeared and which legal jurisdiction applies.
Harm assessment: consumer safety risks, estimated revenue impact, and brand damage, with any lab or authentication reports attached.
Actions taken to date: takedown requests, platform notices, and prior correspondence.
Confidence and unknowns: what is confirmed, what is assessed, and what remains missing.
Recommended next step: a specific action for counsel to evaluate, such as a cease-and-desist letter, platform escalation, or law enforcement referral.
Building a Repeatable Counterfeit Investigation Report Template
A fixed template lets every analyst on a brand protection team produce a case file with the same shape, so counsel can go straight to seller identity, harm assessment, or the recommended action. It also shows missing information before the file leaves the team.
A 2016 article in Brand Protection Professional observed that no standard detailed what a referral packet should contain, and the IPR Center suggested a one-page summary with supporting documents. That guidance is ten years old, and it points to the same need: a defined structure that a team applies each time.
A workable counterfeit investigation report template opens with a two-to-four-sentence executive summary covering the case type, primary seller, channel, and recommended next step. The nine elements from the previous section follow in the same order.
Four conventions keep the template working. Define the confidence scale once, for example confirmed, high, moderate, and low, and apply it to every factual claim. Attach a citation to each claim where it appears so a reviewer can open the named source without searching. State unknowns directly, such as "seller's legal identity unconfirmed" or "authentic product photos not yet retrieved," which gives counsel an accurate view of how strong the matter is. Add a date and version stamp to every draft so counsel can tell which version is current.
The same findings can be reshaped into a one-page leadership summary by pulling the executive summary, harm assessment, and recommended next step. The full case file stays as the record of the analysis.
How Indago Streamlines Brand Protection Reporting
After the analyst has collected material and classified the matter, the remaining work is turning scattered sources into a cited case file. In Indago, the analyst chooses every input and validates every output along the way.
Build the Collection. A Collection holds the sources an analyst assembles before drafting. Material comes in through five routes: Search across indexed media sources; the Chrome and Brave Data Retriever plug-in, which saves highlighted text or the full text of a web page from the analyst's own browsing session, such as the written content of a marketplace listing or seller profile; RSS feeds; API integrations; and file uploads of up to 20 documents at a time. Uploads can include purchase records, exported seller data, and images that contain text. Drafts are built from the sources the analyst has placed in the Collection.
Load a saved template. A saved template stores the outline, including citation instructions, the persona, and a default model. The outline can carry the nine elements, the confidence scale, and the citation style (MLA, Chicago, APA, Harvard, IEEE, or a house format typed into the outline), so each case file starts from the same structure. Persona and tone can be set for the intended reader, whether outside counsel or an internal IP team.
Generate a cited draft. Indago produces a first draft, typically 75 to 85% complete, with citations to the named sources in the Collection. The reviewer opens the source behind each claim and checks the wording and date.
Revise one section at a time. If the harm assessment needs sharper framing, or a new seller record changes the linked-accounts section, the analyst isolates that section, writes targeted instructions, and regenerates only that section. The rest of the draft keeps the review it has already had.
Review with teammates. Teammates can comment inline, so feedback stays attached to the passage it refers to.
Validate and own the report. The analyst or team lead confirms every source, confidence level, and recommended next step before the case file goes to counsel. Indago handles structure and first-draft assembly, and judgment on what the evidence means stays with the analyst.
Evidence Preservation and Chain of Custody Stay With Your Team
Indago works from material the analyst has already collected and uploaded. Capturing forensic evidence, maintaining chain of custody, and filing takedowns take place outside the platform, under the team's own protocol and counsel's direction.
Online captures of marketplace listings, social posts, and domain records can require authentication before a court will rely on them. Federal Rules of Evidence 901 and 902(13) and (14) address how electronic evidence is authenticated, so counsel should confirm the capture method before the team depends on it.
As the prosecutor guidance cited earlier suggests, the case file should record the preservation steps taken, when, and by whom. That record shows counsel and law enforcement how the underlying evidence was secured.
Four Questions to Ask Before a Case File Goes to Counsel
Before a brand protection reporting package leaves the team, a short sign-off review catches omissions that counsel would otherwise find first. Work through four questions:
Does every factual claim trace to a named, dated source? The reviewer should be able to open the source and check the claim directly.
Is the classification stated with its basis? The file should say whether the matter is counterfeit, gray-market, or unauthorized resale and record the evidence behind that label, such as a pricing difference, a packaging difference, or the authorized-channel list.
Are confidence levels and unknowns stated plainly? IP enforcement documentation that presents uncertain findings as confirmed weakens the whole file.
Are the preservation steps and the recommended next step described clearly enough for counsel to act?
Cited drafts shorten the first check, since each claim points to a named source. The check itself, and final sign-off, stay with the analyst or team lead.
See the Counterfeit Case File Workflow in Indago
Book a demo to see the path this article described, from building a Collection to reviewing a cited draft one section at a time.