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For Immediate Release

MarkMonitor and The Steele Foundation Join Forces to Fight Counterfeit and Gray-Market Activity

Alliance Applies Online and Physical Countermeasures to Protect Brands,
Reputations and Revenue

SAN FRANCISCO, May 23, 2007 –MarkMonitor®, the global leader in enterprise brand protection, and The Steele Foundation™, a longtime provider of global investigative and risk management solutions, have formed a strategic alliance to provide businesses with a comprehensive solution to the surge of costly counterfeit, piracy and gray-market crime. By spanning both the virtual and physical marketplaces, this unique solution gives businesses a seamless set of tools to prevent, identify and combat threats to brand integrity both online and on the ground in countries around the world.

“Companies of all sizes are experiencing an increase of counterfeits in online auctions and gray-market diversions, which conspires to undermine channel distribution strategies, as well as consumer trust and safety,” said Irfan Salim, chief executive officer at MarkMonitor. “By joining service offerings, MarkMonitor and The Steele Foundation provide the means to identify illegal sales, validate the legitimacy of products sold online and the capability to launch international physical investigation teams to track and take down illegal product distribution activities associated with this type of brandjacking.”

By joining forces, MarkMonitor and Steele enable businesses to pinpoint the sources of Internet-based counterfeit and gray-market crime as well as the ability to track and redress these ongoing problems at the source. Services offered jointly by Steele and MarkMonitor include the Mark Monitor Online Channel Protection™ solution, which tracks and flags suspicious online activity, and The Steele Foundation’s Global Rapid Response™ operations centers, which monitor all flagged online activity around the clock and deploy locally based field investigators with specialized forensic and intelligence capabilities. Together, this alliance allows for an end-to-end solution providing businesses the ability to create an integrated plan to track down and combat counterfeiting, unauthorized distribution, out-of-compliance distributors and product diversion at every point of the market lifecycle. MarkMonitor and Steele further offer services and data in support of criminal enforcement and litigation.

“When it comes to fighting brand fraud, criminal enforcement has much greater long-term impacts compared to administrative enforcement, which usually leads only to seizure of fake products and payment of modest fines,” said Kenneth Kurtz, chief executive officer at The Steele Foundation. “What we are offering with the combination of MarkMonitor and The Steele Foundation is a way for business leaders to protect consumer interests and safety by taking back control of their brands. Without a comprehensive solution heavy on data, forensics and enforcement, the task is much more difficult.”

• Background Information Figures from the World Customs Organization and Interpol put the total global trade in illegitimate goods at more than $600 billion a year.
• Intellectual property theft costs U.S. companies an estimated $250 billion annually in sales, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. These sales include highly sought after consumer and business-to-business product brands that normally command a premium in the legitimate marketplace.
• Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are a $32 billion industry representing 10 percent of the global market, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
• Counterfeiting costs auto parts suppliers $12 billion in sales annuals ($3 billion in the U.S.) on everything from brake pads to wheel covers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

About MarkMonitor

MarkMonitor, the global leader in enterprise brand protection, offers comprehensive solutions and services that safeguard brands, reputation and revenue from online risks. With end-to-end solutions that address the growing threats of online fraud, brand abuse and unauthorized channels, MarkMonitor enables a secure Internet for businesses and their customers. The company’s exclusive access to data combined with its real-time prevention, detection and response capabilities provide wide-ranging protection to the ever-changing online risks faced by brands today. For more information, visit www.markmonitor.com.

About The Steele Foundation

The Steele Foundation is a longtime global provider of investigative, security and consulting services for multinational Fortune 500 companies, as well as small- and mid-sized businesses, governmental and nonprofit organizations. With regional offices in 18 strategic locations around the world, Steele’s solutions respond to the complexity of doing bushiness in today’s fluid, outsourced marketplace. Specialized local expertise includes intellectual property and brand protection, compliance auditing, forensic accounting, due diligence and background investigations, incident management, emergency response and executive protection.

With nearly 20 years of experience in the field and an international roster of top experts from a range of relevant disciplines, Steele sets the industry standard for innovative, professional and highly personalized crisis and risk management throughout the enterprise. For more information, visit www.steelefoundation.com.

 

Press Contacts:

Te Smith, MarkMonitor
(831)-818-1267 (mobile)/(415) 278-8400
te.smith@markmonitor.com

Jonathan Jordan, A&R Edelman for MarkMonitor
(202)-370-6187 (office) / (240)-483-6986 (mobile)
jjordan@ar-edelman.com

Leslie McCarthy, The Steele Foundation
(415)-354-3851 (office)/ (415)-505-6147 (mobile)
lmccarthy@wwsteele.com

Editor’s Notes: MarkMonitor® is a registered trademark of MarkMonitor, Inc.
All other trademarks included herein are the property of their respective owners.