Third Party Marks

We will advise you whether the brand you propose to use will be likely to bring you into dispute with third parties.

We take into account your attitude to risk and the nature of the market to design a clearance strategy. We also like to know your likely reaction if a complaint is raised. Is there flexibility to change the branding, or are we looking at a high level rebrand that is already under way, where the new mark is to be used in as many countries as possible?

Clients often provide us with a shortlist of candidate marks. They may have devised these in-house or worked with a brand creation agency. Some preliminary internet searching is desirable and we will discuss with you what resources you have in house for this and how we may support you.

Depending on a number of factors we may recommend that we run searches on the databases to which we have access in-house, looking for the identical mark or a very close identical mark protected in relation to relevant services, in the countries of interest. Alternatively we may search for all potentially similar marks and in these cases we would outsource the task to a specialist search company and would then analyse their results, and report on whether we think the mark is free for use and registration.