subject: What is Trademark Watching? [print this page] What is Trademark Watching? What is Trademark Watching?
Once you have registered a trade mark it is in your best interest to be proactive to protect your mark. To do so it is imperative to keep an eye on the trade mark registers to see who may be intending to register a similar mark to yours. Based on this knowledge, you will then be able to take action to enforce your rights before this becomes overly difficult or costly.
Policing your Intellectual Property
Trademark watching is a service designed to provide exactly this protection , by helping trademark owners police their registered marks. An effective watch service will identify and alert a trademark holder when a third party attempts to register a mark which is confusingly similar. This will usually be at the point of publication of the mark, namely before the mark is registered, and thus gives the owner an opportunity to take action to oppose the registration. It is significantly more cost effective to oppose a trade mark application while it is in course and still under examination by the relevant office rather than after it has been registered.
Trademark Watch Services
Some Registers offer a service where they notify trade mark proprietors if they receive a trade mark application which they consider similar to yours. However this notification system can be territory specific, so, for example, the EU registry (OHIM*) will only notify trade mark proprietors who are on their register - in other words, who have an EU trade mark registration. The disadvantage here is that if someone decides to register a similar mark to you on a national register in the EU you would not know about this and problems could therefore be caused if you need to enforce your mark internationally.
This is why it is important not to solely rely on the notification system provided by registry offices. A watch service, however, can cover most territories and can include the monitoring of both national and regional registers such as the EU. This makes for an effective mechanism to protect your brand and be confident that your intellectual property is protected.
* Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market
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