Best ways to effectively monitor trademarks

Registering a trademark is an essential step towards the protection of intellectual property, but only continuous monitoring can ensure that your brand is fully protected from infringement. In order for a trademark to take its full effect, it’s important for a business to continuously enforce its rights against unauthorized use of its brand assets. Although the process can be a bit tricky at times, trademark monitoring offers many advantages to both new and established businesses. With ongoing trademark monitoring, you can:

There are many different types of trademark monitoring options that you can use to protect your brand. These include monitoring done by the IPO, dedicated trademark monitoring services, and monitoring of marketplaces and social media.

In the EU (EUIPO) and the UK (UKIPO, the respective intellectual property offices issue a notification for owners of registered trademarks if a highly similar trademark is being registered. This form of trademark monitoring is carried out by the respective IPOs without additional charge. The scope of this protection is however subject to the discretion and criteria determined by the intellectual property offices.

Dedicated and continuous trademark monitoring services are provided by several providers of brand protection services, including Trama. The pricing typically depends on the number of countries and classes included in the monitoring service. This type of trademark monitoring services tends to scan all newly filed trademark applications and depending on the preferred set up of the client, notify about identical or similar trademarks being filed. This allows the owner of the registered trademark to challenge and oppose similar trademarks during the opposition window and thus prevent their registration.

The two of the aforementioned forms of trademark monitoring relate solely to the evaluation of newly filed trademark applications, neglecting the potential infringements in commercial use. More comprehensive form of trademark monitoring therefore takes the form of monitoring online marketplaces, social media, hosting domains and commercial use, scanning large quantities of data in order to identify potential brand infringement attempts.

At Trama, we have already registered over 6,000 trademarks, providing professional end-to-end service to cover all your trademark needs. If you require any help with trademark monitoring or would simply like to receive professional advice on trademark protection, don’t hesitate to schedule a free consultation with us.