It is important that you monitor and keep an eye on other industry players from time to time. This way, you would know if any of your competitors are using trademarks similar to yours. Usually, this trademark monitoring and policing activities are carried out by the sales and marketing teams as they are the ones with the highest market and competitor exposure. Common methods are routine market surveys, Internet searches and news through the grapevine.
In addition, you would also need to keep track of newly approved trademarks that can be confusingly similar to your existing trademark portfolio. Most companies would engage the services of their trade mark agents to assist in performing periodic trademark searches to monitor the trademark register.
You may also choose to subscribe to a gazette watch service to ensure that you would be notified of any similar marks that are published in the gazette.
Failure to police your trademark rights can cause you to lose them!
Recent Comments