Table of Contents
In Short
- Regular trade mark monitoring helps detect infringement early to protect your brand and legal rights.
- Use monitoring services judiciously, reviewing flagged cases for actual risks.
- Early detection enables preventive action, like cease-and-desist letters, to safeguard brand integrity.
Tips for Businesses
Regularly review the trade mark register, online platforms, and marketplaces for potential conflicts. Leverage IPO notifications but consider additional monitoring services for comprehensive protection. Always consult legal advice before enforcing rights to ensure proportionate and effective actions.
Registering a trade mark is an essential first step to protect your brand, but it is essential to keep an eye out for potential infringement to maintain this protection. Trade mark monitoring is the process of proactively searching for this potential infringement or other unauthorised use of your trade marks, allowing you to take early corrective action to maintain brand integrity, prevent dilution of your mark in the marketplace, and ultimately help you protect your market share. While identifying infringement early and defending your rights is essential, caution should be taken to balance this with the financial cost of aggressive enforcement and potential negative brand image.
Infringement may be as obvious as using an identical business or product name and logo to sell identical goods or services, but it can also be the unintentional use of a similar name or logo to provide similar goods or services. Especially in the latter scenario, we always recommend seeking legal advice before taking any corrective action.
Where and How to Monitor Your Trade Mark
As there are many types of platforms and marketplaces where goods and services are sold or advertised, there are many different services that monitor potential trademark infringement.
The first and most important place to monitor for similar trade marks that may pose a risk to your brand is the trade mark register of the jurisdiction where you have registered your mark(s). Frequent monitoring will allow you to oppose trade marks that commercially conflict with yours.
Several services regularly monitor domain names, social media handles or posts, online marketplaces, and search engine results for conflicts in order to identify potential trademark infringement in the online space. Monitoring potential infringement that occurs offline can prove more difficult and expensive.
When deciding which and how many monitoring services to utilise, you should aim to balance the ongoing cost of the services with the value that the trade marks add to your business.
Legal Benefits of Trade Mark Monitoring
Ensuring your brand remains unique to your business and distinctive in the marketplace naturally has commercial value. However, it is also essential to defend your trade mark registration to maintain your protection. If a similar trade mark is subsequently registered by someone else and you knowingly do not object to this use, you may lose the right to formally object to it after five years.
Early detection allows you to take proactive action to prevent damage to your brand or other losses that you may suffer as a result. If legal proceedings occur, monitoring services can also provide crucial evidence to document the infringing use.
Continue reading this article below the formCall 0808 196 8584 for urgent assistance.
Otherwise, complete this form and we will contact you within one business day.
Limitations and Practical Considerations
The rights in your branding are a valuable business asset that is usually worth protecting. It is essential, however, to consider the limitations of each trade mark monitoring service and to balance the expenditure of policing your trade marks, with the value that each mark brings to your business and the public perception of aggressively enforcing your rights.
Trade mark monitoring services also occasionally produce “false positives” by flagging non-infringing uses that do not pose a commercial risk to you, so it is crucial that a human eye checks the results of monitoring software.
Typically, similar or even identical trade marks used by third parties that do not commercially conflict with your goods and services are not worth pursuing. This will depend, though, on your reputation in the marketplace, how similar the trade marks are to each other, and how similar your products and/or services are.
If the use of a similar or identical trade mark infringes on your rights, the first step is to send a cease and desist letter to set out what your rights are and demand that the third party refrain from using the mark. Should this strategy prove ineffective, you may have to initiate formal legal proceedings to assert your rights.
LegalVision’s Trade Mark Essentials Guide provides valuable information for any business looking to register or enforce a trade mark.
Key Takeaways
Monitoring the marketplace, social media, and the trade marks register for potential trade mark infringement is important to protect your brand, and defend your trade mark registration, but it is important to balance this with the cost.
Trade mark monitoring services have limitations, so you should ensure that a person checks the results to ensure you only invest expenditure in pursuing marks that commercially conflict with yours. If you register your trademark in the UK, the IPO will automatically notify you upon the filing of any new similar marks.
Early detection of infringement allows for swift action, potentially preventing widespread damage to your brand and strengthening your legal position if formal proceedings become necessary.
If you need help with trade marks, contact LegalVision’s experienced intellectual property lawyers as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 258 4780 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Judging this will require a cost-benefit analysis that will be different for each business. Frequent monitoring allows you the best chance to detect infringement early and intervene. However, you may choose to spend this money elsewhere, especially if your business is still in its early stages.
Assessing the similarity between two trade marks, especially those with stylised visual elements, can be a subjective process and takes into account the goods and services traded under the marks, in addition to the marks themselves. For this reason, we suggest seeking legal advice before initiating any contact. Strategies for enforcing your rights will also also depend on whether either side has a valid registration, how extensive of a reputation you or they may have, and the resources you have available to protect your brand.
We appreciate your feedback – your submission has been successfully received.
