EnforceShield Raises 1.7 Million Euros for Autonomous IP Enforcement

The Lithuanian legal tech startup EnforceShield has closed a seed funding round totaling 1.7 million euros. The round was led by Vendep Capital, with FIRSTPICK VC also participating. Founded in 2024, the company is developing an AI platform designed not only to detect intellectual property infringements but also to handle the subsequent enforcement process largely autonomously. According to the company, more than 20 corporate clients are already using the software, which is designed to remove more than 33,500 IP infringements in e-commerce each month.

AI Is Designed to Do More Than Just Find Infringements

Counterfeit products, unauthorized retailers, copied product listings, cloned online stores, fake ads, and phishing sites pose a growing problem for brand owners. From EnforceShield’s perspective, generative AI exacerbates this imbalance: While counterfeit content and offerings can be created increasingly automatically and at low marginal costs, their legal prosecution often still relies on manual labor.

Instead of merely identifying potential infringements and then passing them on to lawyers or brand protection teams, EnforceShield is also designed to handle operational enforcement. According to the company, the software covers the entire process—from cross-platform detection through legal analysis and validation to filing takedown requests, monitoring, and escalation.

“Human at the end” instead of an AI copilot

EnforceShield describes its approach as “Human at the end.” In doing so, the company deliberately distinguishes itself from traditional AI assistants for legal professionals. The AI agents are designed to handle standard cases as independently as possible and make decisions based on predefined legal and platform-specific rules. Humans are only involved at the end of the process for approvals or in more complex exceptional cases.

According to EnforceShield, the system takes into account, among other things, existing evidence, a brand’s IP portfolio, applicable law, potential risks of confusion, unauthorized use, and the respective rules and success criteria of the platforms. The goal is to decouple the volume of cases processed from staffing requirements. Companies should be able to pursue significantly more infringements without having to expand their legal and trademark protection teams proportionally.

Over 33,500 infringements per month

EnforceShield is already implementing this business model with its first major clients. According to the startup, more than 20 corporate clients are using the platform. In e-commerce, the technology removes an average of more than 33,500 intellectual property infringements per month.

Clients include consumer and direct-to-consumer brands, as well as companies with larger brand portfolios. The startup also promises a relatively quick onboarding process. The platform requires only a small amount of initial data and can then independently search for relevant infringements. In some cases, it even uncovers instances that were previously unknown to the respective companies.

The Founder Has a Background in IP Enforcement

EnforceShield was founded in 2024 by Rytis Rudzinskas. The idea arose directly from his work as a lawyer. Rudzinskas had previously handled digital IP enforcement proceedings for clients over several years. According to him, he came to the conclusion that the increasing caseload could not be managed in the long term by hiring additional lawyers and analysts.

He initially financed the early development of the platform himself, together with partners from the law firm CEE Attorneys. In the spring of 2025, software developer Aidis Stukas and his team took over the technical development. About a year later, Stukas made a full-time move to EnforceShield, became CTO, and acquired a stake in the company. His development team also joined the startup.

By the time of the seed round, the product was already on the market.

Vendep Capital Leads Seed Round

The €1.7 million funding round is led by Vendep Capital. FIRSTPICK VC is also participating in the round. Vendep investment manager Artis Bisers sees an opportunity for AI companies, particularly in the automation of processes that have traditionally been service-intensive. When combating brand and product piracy, he notes, detection alone is often not the most difficult part. Rather, what happens after an infringement is identified is crucial.

More Complex Legal Enforcement as the Next Step

The new capital is primarily intended to fund technical and product development.

So far, EnforceShield has focused heavily on standardizable takedown processes. In the future, the AI agents will also be able to handle more complex escalations, repeat offenders, and further enforcement proceedings.

This would allow the platform to gradually cover a larger portion of the IP enforcement lifecycle.

In the long term, EnforceShield aims to serve more than just e-commerce brands. The company cites technology companies, as well as businesses in the sports, media, and publishing sectors, as additional target groups.

LegalTech Evolves from Assistant to Agent

EnforceShield thus exemplifies a shift currently observable in many AI applications. The first generation of generative AI products primarily supported specialists with individual tasks. Agent-based systems, on the other hand, are increasingly designed to take over entire workflows on their own.

In the legal field, this step is particularly challenging. Errors in the enforcement of intellectual property rights can have economic and legal consequences. Accordingly, it will be crucial how reliably EnforceShield can navigate different legal systems, platform rules, and more complex borderline cases.

The figures to date at least show that the model already has initial commercial traction. With 1.7 million euros in additional capital, EnforceShield now aims to demonstrate that automating individual takedown requests can indeed be scaled up into a more comprehensive, autonomous infrastructure for enforcing intellectual property rights.