Counterfeit Enforcement Manager at BURN Nigeria

BURN is the largest vertically integrated modern cookstove company in the world, providing world-class R&D, manufacturing, and carbon offset projects from our HQ in Kenya and across 10 countries in Africa. We are working to create a world where cooking positively impacts all life on earth by producing the world’s most efficient biomass, liquid fuel, and electric cookstoves. Our team of 900 people - 51% of whom are women - is on track to produce and sell over 150,000 stoves per month in 2022 at our solar-powered facility in Kenya.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Counterfeit Enforcement Manager

Location: Lagos
Job type: Full-time

About the Role

• Burn is looking for a Counterfeit Enforcement Manager who will play a pivotal role in developing and executing counterfeit enforcement strategies on a global scale to ensure all our core brands and intellectual property rights are protected across all our commercial markets.
• In this role, the Counterfeit Enforcement Manager will be responsible for implementing and overseeing strategies to identify, investigate, and combat counterfeit activities related to our organization's intellectual property portfolio.
• The ideal candidate will have a strong background in law enforcement, excellent analytical skills, and a passion for protecting the integrity of our brand.

Duties and Responsibilities
Enforcement and surveillance activities:

• Conduct in-depth market research to understand the supplier, distributor, and points of sale for distributing counterfeit products in the various destination markets.
• Proactively collaborate with commercial teams in various domestic markets and implement surveillance programs to monitor online and offline channels for potential counterfeit activities.
• Enforcing intellectual property rights, collaborating with enforcement authorities, establishing relationships with customs officials and staying abreast of brand enforcement practices across all our key commercial markets.

Counterfeit detection:

• Conduct thorough investigations into reported incidents of counterfeiting, working closely with internal teams and external partners.
• Use investigative techniques to identify and track counterfeit products or activities.

Collaboration and coordination:

• Develop and maintain strong relationships with government officials and consultations with anti-counterfeit agencies, port authorities, regulatory authorities and police agencies in different markets to reduce the presence of counterfeit enforcement.
• Proactively conducting brand awareness training with customs and port officials to intercept illegal shipments of counterfeit products.
• Collaborate with government agencies to provide expertise, insights, and recommendations on counterfeit enforcement matters.
• Coordinate with commercial and legal teams to gather necessary data and insights to inform well-rounded and impactful responses to an influx of counterfeit in the market.

Requirements
Legal knowledge:

• Conversant with intellectual property, and anti-counterfeit laws to identify potential infringement actions.
• Work closely with the commercial and legal team to initiate legal actions against counterfeiters and provide necessary evidence for litigation.
• Coordinate with the legal team to proactively register for any intellectual property rights that may support a wider scope of enforcement options.
• Ability to write white papers that showcase regional thought leadership in nascent legal markets where intellectual property laws are yet to be formulated.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.