Monitor and Enforce Your Trademarks With TRADEGUARD ®
You’ve filed everything perfectly, paid all legal and processing fees and you officially have a U.S. registered trademark. Your brand is secure and you have legal protection in case anyone tries to infringe upon your trademark, right? Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. While the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will recognize your registered brand, they will not enforce your trademark rights for you and they will not notify you if someone is infringing upon your trademark rights. If you are not prepared, learning that your trademark isn’t automatically protected and enforced can be very frustrating.
Establish Your Trademark/Brand Protection Strategy
Once you have protected your branding with federal trademark registrations, it is important to avoid losing your rights by not policing the marketplace. Failure to police the marketplace can result in your trademark rights being weakened due to other competitors using the same or similar branding. Overtime this can result in your trademark registrations becoming worthless. Even if you are not aware of the violations, that will not necessarily prevent your protected brands from becoming weaker. You can read more about this in our article “Monitor The Marketplace To Protect Your Trademark Registration And Prevent Your Registered Trademark Rights From Being Reduced Or Entirely Lost Due To Actions By Your Competitors.”
An effective brand protection strategy must address two issues:
- Monitor the marketplace to identify competitors that are using similar branding.
- Plan for the legal expenses to enforce your federal trademark rights and stop competitor use of similar branding.
Most brand protections strategies and other monitoring services only address monitoring the marketplace and do nothing to help manage the legal expenses of enforcement. TRADEGUARD ® addresses both affordability of enforcement and monitoring which makes it a critical resource for businesses and individuals. Don’t worry, you can learn more about TRADEGUARD ® below.
Types of Trademark Monitoring
The exact trademark monitoring program you need will depend on a few factors: the size of your company, how comfortable you are taking legal steps on your own, and your budget. Large publicly traded corporations tend to have expensive monitoring programs devoted to protecting their trademarks. Typically they will receive a report on violations of their trademark each month so their legal teams can decide what action is necessary and go from there.
On the other end of the spectrum are robotic, automated systems that run web searches for your trademark. These can still be very helpful, but may miss things and won’t necessarily help you take steps forward to protect your property if they do find something.
Introducing TRADEGUARD ®
That’s where TRADEGUARD ® by Garcia-Zamor comes in. TRADEGUARD ® is an affordable trademark monitoring and enforcement service that is monitored by US attorneys (no relying on outsourcing). This maintains your attorney client privilege and makes sure that all of the data is treated with the confidentiality provided by the US legal system.
TRADEGUARD ® is designed so that you feel secure in knowing that all of the service and features that are critical to your protection strategy are covered. TRADEGUARD ® provides three levels of service so that you can select the level that is most beneficial to you and your business. Whichever level of protection you choose, TRADEGUARD ® is designed to be much more affordable than the expensive services large businesses use but provides you with more security and features than automated options. Tradeguard will both help you find instances of trademark infringement but will also help you with litigation costs and/or the costs of filing administrative actions at the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board if it becomes necessary.
TRADEGUARD ® has several different subscription options to help the service fit into your budget while meeting your needs. The basic month-to-month subscription plan will monitor publications and parts of the internet for you, provide you with reports, and give you a free thirty minute consultation to help you take the next legal steps that you decide are necessary.
TRADEGUARD PLUS is a move advanced six month subscription that will also provide a cease and desist letter if you require one — which can immediately save you from a big headache and will stop most violators! TRADEGUARD PLUS also gives the option of one free infringement analysis report per six month subscription. TRADEGUARD PREMIUM is a yearly subscription that includes all of the above and more, including a 25% discount on legal fees if further litigation is necessary.
Most importantly, TRADEGUARD ® lets you rest easy, knowing that your trademarks and branding are protected. If you think TRADEGUARD ® is the perfect legal service for your needs or if you have other questions concerning intellectual property law, contact Garcia-Zamor today and know that your rights will be protected.
