Trademark Monitoring
Trademark monitoring is the process of proactively adopting measures to search for others’ use of trademarks that are similar to your own, so that you can properly detect and take action against potential infringers and preserve your own trademark rights. Brand Registry Trademark assists online sellers with domestic and international trademark monitoring. We are skilled at detecting potentially threatening brands, trademark applications, and trademark registrations, and performing early intervention in order to enforce or defend trademark rights before problems get bigger and more costly to address.
Your trademark rights weaken from similar use by others.
Under trademark law, even if you have perfected your rights through trademark registration, third parties can still weaken those trademark rights or block you from expanding them into other product lines if they use or register confusingly similar names. The longer such third-party use goes unchecked, the more expensive and less likely it becomes to successfully correct the situation through trademark enforcement action.
How does trademark monitoring work?
Trademark monitoring systems that identify potential problems early on and systematically can provide a significant advantage to brand owners. If use of confusingly similar marks by third parties is identified and challenged early on, third parties are much more likely to abandon the problematic use when confronted because they have not heavily invested resources into marketing or inventory for the brand.
What kind of trademark monitoring can brand owners do on their own?
Brand owners can do many things on their own to start effectively monitoring their trademarks. For example, they can:
- look for similar marks in same or similar business channels;
- conduct periodic keyword searches through Google, or
- periodically search trademark applications and registrations in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS).
When it comes to trademark monitoring, doing something is better than doing nothing. However, more can usually be accomplished by employing an expert to conduct trademark monitoring.
Using trademark attorneys to conduct advanced trademark monitoring.
Many skilled trademark attorneys have advanced software tools and trademark monitoring processes that they can use on behalf of brand owners and trademark registrants. Trademark attorneys can more expertly search for and identify third-party trademark applications and other activities that pose a threat to your trademark rights. Significantly, involving trademark attorneys in your monitoring program often means that you can authoritatively intervene and attack others’ confusingly similar trademark applications and registrations. In particular, trademark attorneys are uniquely qualified and positioned for trademark enforcement such as issuing cease and desist letters, initiating and conducting trademark oppositions and cancellations, and carrying out pre-litigation and litigation.
By adopting an effective trademark monitoring system, online sellers can better preserve and optimize the value of their trademark registrations by ensuring that others are not encroaching on their trademark rights or plans for future brand and product expansion.
Contact Brand Registry Trademark today in order to get help setting up and executing an effective trademark monitoring program to detect and intervene in potential threats to your trademark rights.
