Registering your trademark is just the first step in protecting your brand.
Some people think that once they register or file their Trademark, they are done. This is not true.
Once you register or file a trademark, you have to protect it or you could still lose valuable intellectual capital.
1. Loss of Trademark Rights:
If you fail to monitor your trademarks it can lead to the loss of your trademark rights. For instance, if a third party begins the use of a similar trademark in commerce in connection with goods and/or services similar to yours and you do little or nothing to police your trademark, your trademark is likely to lose value as a source identifier in the marketplace.
As a result, the trademark will become weaker, and, you may lose your rights entirely. To avoid the loss of your trademark rights, you must police your trademark by monitoring for infringement and, by enforcing your trademark rights through various legal means
2. Loss of the Ability to Enforce against a Particular Infringer:
When you find out about infringement of your Trademark and if you don’t stop it shortly, then you may lose the right to stop it in the future.
3. Loss of Business:
If you fail to monitor your trademark it can also lead to the loss of revenue and, in cases of significant infringement, end your business.
An effective monitoring/watch strategy will identify infringing use early on before it can impact your business. The sooner infringement is discovered the easier it is to resolve. The more money an infringer has invested in a business name, the more likely they are to put up a fight against having to change their infringing trademark.
Monitoring helps you spot the infringement early and to stop it before your business experiences substantial loss by an infringer.
It’s your responsibility to monitor trademark registrations that might conflict with your registered mark. If you don’t monitor for potentially infringing trademark applications and fail to oppose a conflicting mark’s publication, then it becomes much more difficult and expensive for you to stop the other mark from causing losses.