How Brands Use Your Data: The Hidden Link Between Trademarks and Data Privacy

Trademarks are now not only symbols indicating the direction of the source of the product or service. They are valuable assets that help establish a brand's personality and foster customer trust. A trademark can be a brand name, logo, or slogan. When someone sees a recognized trademark, they assume that the brand is secure, reliable, and of high quality. This trust plays a big role in how people behave online.

If consumers feel safe about a brand, they will use its websites, apps, and services without giving the risk too much thought. They will accept cookie consents, subscribe to newsletters, join loyalty schemes, or provide personal information, just because they can trust the brand. This is not merely a matter of habit. It is a culmination of how firms establish trust by branding and secure such an image through intellectual property rights.

At the same time, our data became extremely precious to companies. Data about how we shop, what we are looking for, where we are heading, and what we like is used to generate profits. The majority of brands collect this information secretly while appearing clean and trustworthy. Most individuals are unaware of how much personal data they provide or how it might be used later.

This blog will examine in some depth how trademarks and branding result in the sharing of information. It will consider how businesses exploit the trust that has been built up through their trademark to gather personal information, even before users are in any way aware of what they are consenting to. It will ask if trademark legislation, which is in place to safeguard brand identity, should now bear some responsibility for how trust is then exploited. In this technology era, when trust and information walk hand in hand, it is not wrong to question whether brands have the same responsibility for what they do with consumers' data, given to them without hesitation.Top of Form

Establishing Trust with Trademark Identity

Trademarks affect consumers because they introduce a feeling of familiarity, consistency, and reliability. A known trademark does more than enable a consumer to differentiate between products. It invokes repeated engagement by guaranteeing quality and moral integrity. To most consumers, the sight of a familiar brand on a website or program provides an unwritten feeling of safety. The brand acts as an emblem of validity and guarantee.

This is not an accidental trust. It is established through continuous marketing, product experience, and reputation, all protected and preserved by legal rights under trademark law. Intellectual property protections enable brands to protect their identity while enabling companies to form long-term relationships with consumers based on perceived reliability.

From Trust to Data: How Consumers Volunteer Information

When customers trust you, they are far more inclined to engage with the online channel of a brand. They download apps, subscribe to accounts, join newsletters, sign up for loyalty schemes, and opt into cookie tracking. Often this is done with little prompting.

Research has established that consumers will not normally read through privacy statements or look at the entire range of data collection methods when interacting with sites they trust. Such a trend in behaviour implies an underlying correlation between trademark confidence and the readiness with which information about themselves is given. Having a recognized brand name or symbol can decrease a consumer's guard, such that they are more willing to willingly provide sensitive information.Bottom of Form

How Brands Leverage IP-Patented Identities to Recruit Data?

Digital brands use their intellectual property strategically to build ecosystems that capture and retain consumers. These ecosystems are designed with data-harvesting devices, such as mobile apps, web trackers, cookies, and programmatic loyalty systems. When consumers use these devices, they unknowingly surrender rich data points such as location, browsing behaviour, affinities, and even biometric inputs.

What's interesting in such data gathering is not only a technical advance, but the extent to which they are surrounded by trust. The consumer feels that they're being approached by a trustworthy brand. They're being used as a means of acquiring individuals and behaviour data to utilize in targeted marketing, product development, and algorithmic improvement.

Ethical Issue: Abuse of Trust

The moral issue is the way companies utilize their reputational goodwill. Most successful companies have complex privacy policies that are hard to follow or even designed to be ambiguous. Interface designs can lead people gently into agreeing with all conditions without explaining the ramifications. These are not isolated design flaws but deliberate strategies that utilize people's trust.

The moral problem is heightened if there are image brands that reassure consumers. In such situations, informed decision-based consent is an illusion. Consumers assent to intrusive data practices because they do not necessarily comprehend them or support them, but because they tacitly assume the brand will be responsible. The question is whether trademark owners need to be held to a superior moral obligation of responsible data guardianship.

Legal Frameworks: GDPR, DPDP, and the Accountability Gap

New privacy laws for data have attempted to balance the playing field between consumers and data collectors. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) impose specific obligations on data fiduciaries. The laws impose transparency, purpose limitation, minimisation of the collection of data, and regard for the consent of the person.

But the legal burden created under such legislation is not sensitive to the distinction between famous and less famous brands. All are equalized, irrespective of the power their trademark has towards creating trust among users. That creates a void. While brands are enhanced by intellectual property rights that are part of trust creation, the same rights are not bringing about additional burdens when that trust is utilized to acquire information. The result is a separation between the legal protection of the mark and the ethical effect of its impact.

Should Trademark and IPR Laws Mature with Time?

This divergence gives rise to a wider legal and philosophical question. Is intellectual property law to continue being bound up in problems of brand recognition and marketplace confusion, or should it adapt to account for how trademarks operate in the modern data economy?

There is a new case to be made for expanding trademark law to encompass ethical considerations of data use. Brands that secure data access on the back of consumer trust arguably also bear some duty to act responsibly and transparently. That responsibility could be mobilized in the guise of privacy certifications, stronger disclosure obligations, or revamped trademark guidelines, taking data stewardship as part of brand value.

Amending trademark law in such a manner would not be at odds with its initial function. Rather, it would update the doctrine to comport with the realities of an online environment in which brand identity and data gathering cannot be separated.

[Image Sources: Shutterstock]

Brands Rebranding Themselves Around Privacy

These brands are already shifting to accommodate evolving consumer demands by incorporating privacy into their brand. Apple, for instance, explicitly advocates for user privacy through product development and advertising campaign initiatives. Likewise, brands such as DuckDuckGo and Brave have repositioned themselves as privacy-centric alternatives to mainstream search engines and browsers.

These companies are not merely fulfilling what regulatory compliance demands. They are leveraging their trademark as an emblem of ethical involvement. By having the basis of their business model on privacy, they have made accountable use of data a point of distinction. This revolution shows that branding and privacy do not conflict with each other. By no means can transparency be a marketing benefit.

In the modern digital era, trademarks are no longer merely commercial. They are also instruments for influencing consumer behaviour and providing access to user information. Brand trust and data exchange are no longer accidents—they are now strategic, intentional, and inseparable in contemporary business.

Whereas the data protection regimes have put huge burdens on companies, they nevertheless do not touch on the distinctive role IP-protected branding has in organizing consent and making data harvesting possible. Since branding and surveillance only increasingly becoming embedded with one another, there is an increasing requirement to think differently about trademark law as a guardian of commercial identity but also as a repository of moral responsibility.

Author: - Anshika Sharma, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email to chhavi@khuranaandkhurana.com or at  Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorney.

References

1. https://www.dpdpa.in/ 

2. https://www.dpdpa.in/dpdpa_rules_2025/dpdpa_draft_rules_english_.pdf 

3. https://gdpr-info.eu/art-25-gdpr/ 

4. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/accountability-and-governance/guide-to-accountability-and-governance/data-protection-by-design-and-default/ 

5. https://www.inta.org/wp-content/uploads/public-files/advocacy/committee-reports/81452413_2_UKMATTERSINTA-Data-Protection-Article.pdf 

6. https://generisonline.com/the-impact-of-gdpr-and-other-privacy-laws-on-trademark-enforcement-and-monitoring/ 

7. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/05/15/consumer-trust-and-data-privacy-in-the-digital-age/