Trade Mark Watching Services

Why set one up?

Although your trade mark registration provides a legal basis for allowing you to prevent others from registering a confusingly similar mark for confusingly similar goods/services; how will you know that anyone is attempting to register such a mark? Some clients mistakenly believe that they will be notified of this by the trade mark registry; however, that is often not the case. For this reason, many brand owners choose to set up a trade mark watching service in order to find out if anyone is trying to register a conflicting mark and to allow them to take action quickly if they do.  This can result in huge cost savings since many trade mark systems provide a short opposition period after registration / publication of only a few weeks which allows rights to be challenged more easily at that point than if they were challenged at a later date.

What does it cost?

The yearly fees involved in having us issue an automated trademark watch service for one mark are set out below:-

• Europe (including all 28 EU countries) – £320 ex VAT.
• International (including EU, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Canada, United States, plus 88 WIPO countries) – £420 ex VAT.

If you have more than one mark to be covered by the watch service then a discount of 15% will be applied per additional mark.

Which option should I choose?

Although there is relatively little difference in the costs of establishing a European versus an International watching service, due to the number of countries covered, the returned results in an International search will be far greater in number which can make sifting through the results more difficult.  Furthermore, this is only typically of value if you possess rights which allow you to take action in those territories.  Therefore, in short, if you own rights in “only” the UK and Europe you may wish to choose the European watching service, whereas if you own or intend to own rights in other countries outside of Europe then you should select the International watching service.