Thomson Reuters Acquires Brand Protection Company MarkMonitor

Thomson Reuters announced today that it has made a deal to acquire a brand protection company called MarkMonitor for an undisclosed sum.

The MarkMonitor website says the company offers a suite of products and services that include brand protection (i.e., protecting trademarks and commerce), anti-piracy, anti-fraud, and domain management. The Wikimedia Foundation recently moved all of its sites from GoDaddy to MarkMonitor (as noted by The Next Web). The company says it serves more than half of the brands on the Fortune 100.

MarkMonitor has more than 400 employees in five countries, and the team (including CEO Irfan Salim) will be joining Thomson Reuters. In the press release, Thomson Reuters’ president of IP & Science Chris Kibarian describes the acquisition as “the beginning of a transformational shift within the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters.”

Investors in MarkMonitor include Cargill Ventures, Focus Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Institutional Venture Partners.