What is trademark policing and why is it important?

Last updated on: January 16, 2023

Brand and digital content owners should be no strangers to the value added by registering trademarks that are used by their business. Once registered as a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), or an equivalent authority in other parts of the world, this doesn´t mean your intellectual property isn’t at risk. .

 What brand and digital content owners must also remember, is the fact that brand identity protection is an ongoing process. While trademark registration is a big step toward intellectual property protection, it is only the first step in what will likely be a continuous battle. An essential component of successful brand identity protection is continuous monitoring against trademark infringement.

With this in mind, we will be focusing on the following topics in today’s article:

• What is trademark policing?
• Why is trademark policing important for brands and businesses?
• How to conduct proper trademark policing 

What is trademark policing?

Trademark policing is the act of monitoring third-party use of your brand’s active trademarks to detect if any infringement has occurred. In other words, trademark policing is the act of maintaining a constant oversight of the market for potential cases of trademark abuse.

While detecting trademark infringement can be done manually, the truth is that doing so may not be a practical choice for your business. Firstly, if you choose to do this yourself, you will have to sacrifice your time to perform the manual work of tracking down infringers; which is a task that could potentially be endless. Alternately, if you are considering hiring employees specifically for this task can be a costly endeavor, given the wide range of responsibilities and manual nature of this role. 

Fortunately, as a result of technological developments in the brand protection world, there is a third option: Trademark Monitoring Software. Businesses can outsource this process to a specialized software service provider like Red Points, where businesses can use their AI-integrated platform to automate a process that might otherwise take a full dedicated team weeks to accomplish.

Why is trademark policing important? 

As stated above, registering your business’s trademarks is not only essential to securing and protecting your brand identity but is also just the first step in an effective trademark protection strategy. 

What this means is that enforcing your trademark regularly can extend the lifespan of your trademark. By policing your trademark, there is compelling proof that you are not only using the mark but are also actively protecting your rights over it.

Trademark policing ensures that the time, effort, and hard work you invested into developing your brand won’t go to waste. Proper trademark policing guarantees a level playing field for your brand against competitors and bad actors by minimizing the chance for infringers to leech off of your success.

How can you police trademarks for your brand or business?

With this in mind, we have listed below a number of ways by which you can engage in effective trademark policing for your brand or business.

Actively monitor the market for any potential infringing uses of your business marks.

As a fundamental step in trademark policing, active monitoring can be done by manually and diligently searching the web for improper uses of your registered trademarks. 

Another option is to search the online database of USPTO, or similar databases for comparable organizations around the globe, for trademark applications and registrations. 

However, because of the time and financial investment necessary for these two previously described approaches, most companies seeking the best value will resort to a third-party monitoring service. These monitoring services, such as Red Points’ Trademark Monitoring Software, are able to monitor a significant amount of digital space to detect and automatically takedown cases of infringement or misuse of registered trademarks.

Develop a system to dissuade infringers from targeting your business.

Once trademark infringement has been successfully detected, it is also important to consider what actions will be taken to stop the infringement. 

For instance, the standard legal process would typically involve sending out a cease and desist letter from your company to the infringer. This is typically the first step when dealing with cases of infringement. It sends a powerful message to take down any post or advertisement that contains infringing marks or they could be taken to court. 

As a follow-through measure, some businesses lodge formal complaints against identified infringers. This could involve reporting the perpetrator to the host or platform where the infringing content is posted, or even filing a case in court. If they are convinced that an infringement has occurred, the infringer may face penalties such as formal prohibition, take-down, and potentially even the repayment of financial damages. In this case, trademark monitoring does not only help in detecting cases of infringement, but it also helps in assessing and/or quantifying how serious the damage can be to your brand.

What’s next?

Trademark policing is an essential component of any successful business’s brand protection strategy. Failing to enforce registered trademarks over time could be detrimental to your business.

Fortunately, Red Points can assist in ensuring your trademarks are not infringed upon with its Trademark Monitoring Software. With this support, you can be assured both your business’s revenue and its brand will not be impacted by bad actors seeking to leech off of your success.