Why keep an eye on your trademark protection?

This question can sound a bit strange. What means to keep an eye on a trademark?

Well, to be protected every trademark has to be registered with the Patent Office. Of course, there are some situations where even unregistered trademarks are protected to some extent but the general rule of thumb is that you have to register your sign as a trademark in order to take the full advantage of this protection.

Many people believe that after registration the work is done completely. But this is a wrong conclusion.

On the contrary. You need to do several things on a regular basis in order first for your protection to be active and second to prevent any infringements. After all the idea for the protection of a brand is this right to be enforced if it is necessary.

So what you need to do in that regard. There are two main essential things that have to be taken into account:

1. Do a trademark search on a regular basis. Why? Even though the trademark search is more known as an activity that helps to discover what are the chances for registration before filing an application, it is relevant for the time after registration too.  The reason is that by doing a regular search you will be able to see whether there are new identical or similar trademark applications to yours. This will allow you to file oppositions in time to stop these new similar marks that can create confusion amongst the consumers.
2. Store and manage your trademarks information well. It sounds basic as a recommendation but it is crucial for the mark’s protection. The reason is that every mark is registered but only for a limited term. In most cases for 10 years. After that, you need to renew the protection for the next period of 10 years. If you miss doing this you will lose your registration. Apart from this, you need to follow many Patent Office’s procedure rules as well as to be aware of how the mark is used and whether there are licenses for it. This requires good database management that will help you to accomplish this task easily.

So if we have to summarize, trademark protection requires more then just the act of registration. You need to be proactive in order for your trademark protection to be viable and active.

If you want to learn how to search for trademark in six countries, check this new Udemy course: Complete course on trademark search.

For building a trademark database you can check this another Udemy course: A complete guide on how to build an IP database using Asana.

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