If your business has invested in clearing and registering trademarks and has established valuable goodwill in your marks, a trademark watch service subscription can be a valuable tool to help maintain that value and prevent encroachment on your marks. A watch service provides notice when an application is filed or published for marks the same or confusingly similar to your marks. Your chances of preventing another from using a confusingly similar mark are improved, and less expensive, if you object to a conflicting mark early in another’s process of adopting or seeking to register a mark.
Owen, Wickersham & Erickson offers a selection of watch services that can be tailored to your individual needs, including domestic watches and international watches if you have regional or global applications or registrations..
The standard watch services we offer:
United States Federal Applications
Publication. If your business is limited to the United States, we offer two choices for watching federal applications. The first is notification when marks are published for opposition in the Official Gazette. This notification gives you an opportunity to prevent registration of conflicting marks.
Filing Alert. For earlier notification of possible conflicts, we recommend the filing watch. With this service you are notified of potentially conflicting marks when an application is filed in the Trademark Office. If the application is not withdrawn and subsequently published for opposition, notice of publication is included.
Additional watch targets can be incorporated in these domestic watches, including state registrations, domain name registrations, trade name filings, and tracking filings by key competitors.
International Applications
Selected Countries or Regions. If your business is active in specific countries or regions, but not worldwide, this is a good option. We review marks published for opposition in the selected countries/regions and we notify you of potentially conflicting marks. Tell us what countries/regions are important and we will tailor a watch subscription to fit your needs. The United States can be included as one of the selected countries.
Global. A global watch provides information about published marks from trademark offices throughout the world. We review and notify you of potentially conflicting marks.
Annual subscriptions for international watches are charged on a per-mark basis; fees vary depending upon the service and the number of classes watched. Our review of the watch notices, informing you of potentially conflicting marks, and subsequent work is charged on a straight time basis.
Please call us to discuss which watch is appropriate for your business.