Trademark protection: the surveillance service for the protection of your brand

The registration is surely a first and very important step for the protection of the trademark, but further actions are necessary to preserve the strength of your logo and to prevent other subjects from registering trademarks identical with or similar to yours, for identical or related products and/or services.

How to protect your brand: the role of your trusted advisor

In the absence of a constant and systematic monitoring of the trademark registers (where the data of all filed and/or registered trademarks are shown) it is very rare that you become aware of the attempt to register a trademark conflicting with yours: that’s where your IP trusted consultant comes into play, who can carry out this activity for you, in a professional and constant manner, and who can report to you each malicious attempt to registration, suggesting the best strategy to protect your rights.

Remind, furthermore, that your consultant is part of a worldwide network of IP professionals and is therefore able to assist you wherever a problem arises.

Trademark protection: the surveillance service

The activation of a professional monitoring service is an important tool for the protection of a filed or registered trademark because it allows you to immediately trace the filing of trademark identical with or similar to yours.

Our firm too offers a trademarks surveillance service which allows you to promptly become aware of the filing of trademark applications identical with or similar to yours, for identical or similar products or services. Monitoring is carried out in connection with your concrete protection needs and it can be limited to Italy, Europe, to other territories (for example China) or it can be done worldwide. For example, if your business is in Europe and US, you can decide to monitor only these two geographic areas: but, if you are interested in expanding your business potentially everywhere, then you will need to take into consideration the possibility of establishing a surveillance service all over the world.

The activation of the trademark surveillance system ensures that you can be informed in time of the filing or a potentially dangerous trademark, so that you can be able to oppose its registration. Usually the opposition is less expensive than a court action buti t can only be activated within generally short deadlines (usually within two or three months from the date of publication of the trademark, but the terms vary from State to State).

This service has allowed us to become aware, for example, of the filing of trademarks identical with or similar to our clients’ trademarks, made by unauthorized agents or distributors, allowing us to block these forms of exploitation before they had cause more serious commercial consequences of image.

It should be specified that the surveillance service allows to detect the filing of identical and/or similar trademarks, but not the existence of a de facto trademark, traceable through different detection systems.

Get in touch with your trusted advisor who will be able to give you all necessary information

How much the trademark surveillance system costs

The costs of this kind of service are not particularly high:

• Cost Italy: Euro 255/ year up to 3 product categories
• Worldwide cost: Euro 530/ year in 1 product class.

Why protecting your brand is important

Remember, finally, that it is always advisable to implement an active policy to protect the brand, because the actions you take against the imitators contribute to giving value to your brand: the proliferation of brands similar to yours is never positive, not only because the imitations can cause confusion in consumers, with consequent leaving of the client to your detriment, but also because brands similar to yours progressively contribute to erode the originality of your brand and, as a result, its impact on the public.