“Just being properly informed of new trademark applications previous rights may be exercised against potentially harmful new applications”.
Trademarks watching service. We have mentioned before in this space the reasons for registering a trademark, but once we have our own trademark it is important to keep monitoring the new applications to guarantee its effectiveness against potential infringers, whether random or malicious unfair.
This watching service is offered by professionals specialized on Industrial Property, usually through patents and trademarks offices that allow to be promptly informed about new applications that might conflict.
These conflicts of interests are of special importance in case of denominatives, phonetics and/or visual identities where there is a very high risk of confusion or association by the consumer. In these cases it is vital to be properly informed and that in most countries, Spain included, before the absence of oppositions, the administration grant all trademarks which have passed the substantive, formal and legal examination.
Trademark watching is performed using powerful informatics tools with which portfolio trademarks are compared with all the new applications published in the Journals destined for that purpose.
This service can be done at national level, in our case Spain, in the whole European Union (especially useful for trademarks), for specific countries or globally.
In all cases, applications of identical or similar trademarks are detected and the interested person is informed within a deadline to decide whether to initiate some action.
The competent administration contemplates the possibility to submit, within a period marked from the moment of publication, administrative opposition against the new application.
“If the opposition succeed, the new trademark application will be denied”
Developing this opposition successfully requires experienced knowledge, so at this point is also important to have the support of appropriate professionals.
