Trademark Portfolio Management
Trademark Portfolio Management is a little bit different than strategy. Because in Portfolio Management we narrow the focus to the marks that you’re using right now. And so, what we first do is we Inventory what you got. We take a look at your registrations, and we also take a look at the uses of marks.
So, we are looking for your names that you’re using, slogans, and logos. And so, we want to go over your packaging and your marketing materials and make sure that those are in alignment, and we’ll probably identify some things that you need to register, and we might even identify some marks that you’re interested in either going ahead and not renewing or perhaps selling or licensing.
So, there’s all kinds of things that happen in this step. In addition, we’re going to schedule all the renewal dates that are needed to make sure that we keep your registrations going; and in addition to that, we’re going to recommend that if you have marks that you’re using but haven’t registered yet, we’re going to suggest that you go ahead and register those marks with the U.S. Trademark Office.
Trademark monitoring looks over different channels of commerce including online and social media, and the main concern there is to make sure that your mark isn’t being diluted and squeezed out and becoming just kind of a common word; and in addition, of course we don’t want to let people copy your stuff and steal your customers. So, you’ll want to set up a monitoring Program as part of your Portfolio Management. Then, we’re going to get down to Enforcement, and that means that for some of these people that are, you know, piggybacking off your brand names and slogans and logos, you’re going to want to put them on notice that you got registrations, you have prior use rights, and that they need to stop using a name that’s confusingly similar to yours, especially if customers are getting confused. So, this is just an overview of the framework of Trademark Portfolio Management [efn_note]Trademark Portfolio Management is a little bit different than strategy. [/efn_note] (of course, there’s much more to it). So, I hope you’ll be in touch, and we can help plan a Trademark Portfolio Management Program for you.