The principle of ‘replacement’ and key UK Intellectual Property Office updates
What is the principle of ‘replacement’ and how will the UKIPO’s updates affect this?
Read more
A trade mark watch identifies third party applications to register trade marks which may conflict with your own, so that you have the opportunity to oppose.
Monitoring and challenging conflicting applications before they are registered reduces the risk of dilution of your rights (and therefore the risk of trade marks becoming hard to defend and less valuable) and helps detect potential infringements. More often than not, filing an opposition is not necessary because a negotiated settlement can be achieved with the applicant that protects your interests.
Watching is particularly important in jurisdictions (such as the UK and EU) where the trade mark system is self-policing and the Trade Mark Office will not refuse conflicting applications on its own initiative.
Also, even in jurisdictions where the Trade Mark Office should reject conflicting applications, there is the potential for earlier rights to be missed by examiners, or examiners may be persuaded to waive objections. A watching service safeguards against this.
We can provide trade mark watches for a single country, multiple territories, or worldwide.
Filtered: We review the watch results and only report to you when we see an application that is actionable. Over time we will get a good feeling for where you will and won’t want to take action and tailor our reporting accordingly.
Unfiltered: We forward the raw watch results for your review. You notify us of anything of concern, so we can then advise appropriate action.
Single country: from £350
EU (+UK): from £600
Worldwide: from £900
Single country: from £200
EU (+UK): from £320
Worldwide: from £450
These costs are indicative only and do not include VAT (where applicable). We can provide more accurate cost estimates for specific cases.
If you would like to set up trade mark watching or discuss the service in more detail, please contact your usual attorney, or any member of our trade mark team, who will be able to assist you.