Trademarks and Trademark Protection – Part 3: Trademark Monitoring and Renewal
Trademarks are of paramount importance to companies as their identifiers. For customers, the trademark can imply expectations and associations, which can be very positive. It is therefore so important to have your trademarks protected. The mere protection is not enough, however. This last article explains why it is often unavoidable to monitor trademarks and what trademark renewal is about
Trademark Monitoring
Once a trademark has been registered with the Intellectual Property Institute, its owner has the exclusive right to it. The trademark owner can decide on his or her own how he or she is going to use his or her trademark and whether or not he or she permits someone else to use it as well. If, after five years from its registration, you do not use your trademark any more, a third party can apply for its deletion. Therefore, if you are going to wait a while before you use a registered trademark, you should gather evidence that the trademark is actually used.
It also happens increasingly more often that trademarks are registered that are identical or misleadingly similar to old ones. You can defend yourself against that. The Intellectual Property Institute does not check ex officio if the same or similar trademarks have already been registered or not. If the formal criteria are fulfilled, a new trademark is registered.
If the owner of a previously registered trademark believes that a recent trademark violates his or her right, he or she can raise, within three months, a substantiated objection. This makes it necessary for his or her trademark to be verified on a regular basis. You can outsource this task to STARTUPS.CH experts, who will be pleased to monitor your trademarks for you and keep you informed should it possibly collide against any other trademark. If necessary, you could then, with such information at hand, warn the owner of any recent trademark and object its registration.
Trademark Renewal
In Switzerland, every registered trademark is protected for ten years. Trademarks that are no longer used are thus prevented from blocking the possibility of founding new companies. However, if a trademark continues to be used, its protection can be extended. For this purposes, a renewal application has to be filed with the Intellectual Property Institute. You can outsource this administrative formality to our experts and thus stay entirely focused on your operations.
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