Monitoring

As a trademark holder, you have a legal obligation to act against third parties that come too close to your trademark. If you fail to act, you run the risk of being criticised yourself for contributing to the descent into anonymity of your trademark and the loss of its unique “face” (dilution).

You therefore need to keep tabs on the use of trademarks in the market. The trademark register can play a part here.

To keep tabs on the use of trademarks, it is important to monitor the changes in the relevant trademark registers. Arnold + Siedsma offers a number of monitoring options. One option, for example, is to take out a monitoring subscription authorising our attorneys to check specific trademark registers periodically for changes for you. As a result, you can be informed in a timely manner of any new trademark filings that might cause problems for you. It is then up to you to decide whether or not action needs to be taken against a new trademark filing of this type.

Arnold + Siedsma can carry out different types of monitoring for you, depending, for example, on the geographical area to be covered and the extent to which our specialist trademark attorneys need to give substantive advice on the relevance of the trademark filings that they find. Arnold + Siedsma can therefore tailor the monitoring entirely to your requirements, whereby we can provide you in advance with an answer to the often difficult question of whether a serious risk is involved. On the basis of our advice, you can then concentrate totally on deciding whether or not you wish to take action.

Arnold + Siedsma offers its clients a free monitoring subscription for the first filing of a trademark in the Benelux or the European Union for the first year.