How Many People WWE Employs To Fight Pirated Broadcasts & Bootlegged Merchandise

WWE is always looking to lock down intellectual property with trademarks. There is a reason why they spend so much time and money doing this, because they are always at war with pirates and bootleggers.

Lauren Dienes-Middlen, WWE’s Assistant General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Intellectual Property recently spoke to Sports Business Journal. She explained that WWE has a team at their Stamford Headquarters who are always on the lookout for more instances of bootlegged merchandise and streaming broadcasts.

“We devote a lot of time and energy and financial resources to protect our IP. So that third-party fans are not getting product that they believe to be coming from us that’s in fact actually counterfeit product that would not meet the standards that are set by whatever country, not just the United States.”

Dienes-Middlen and her four-person team work out of Stamford. The company also owns “nearly 8,000 active trademark registrations and applications worldwide.” It is this team’s job to stop bootleggers from taking WWE’s product and making money, not to mention diminishing the product to a point where it doesn’t meet WWE’s standards.