Brands secure the value of a company to a significant extent: customers often identify with products and services based on the brand. An established brand creates trust, builds long-term relationships with customers, employees, stakeholders and shareholders and leads to important competitive advantages. Brands offer recognition value, protect companies from free riders and can represent considerable assets with increasing awareness.
In order to take advantage of registered trademarks, they must be registered, registered and maintained. Are all important trademarks successfully registered? In which countries are the important trademarks protected? Are all entries current? Will entries expire shortly? Are there similar trademarks of competitors who have applied for registration?
Your trademarks and domains are closely linked: Some domain extensions cannot be registered without registered brand names. Registration in the Trademark Clearinghouse - and thus preferential treatment for the new domain extensions - is not possible without a registered trademark. Legal disputes with third parties over registered domains are hardly successful without corresponding trademark rights. On the other hand, active domains can be used as proof of the use of a trademark.
You have registered your trademarks via trademark attorneys – but have you also cleary arranged the relevant data of your trademarks, up-to-date and automatically available? This is the only way to develop and pursue strategies in good time to protect and further expand the success of your company.
With us you have clearly listed all relevant information about your trademarks and domains. Important deadlines are immediately visible, so you won't miss a renewal of your registered trademarks. Our systems monitor the surroundings of your brands and inform you automatically about changes.
You can forward these prepared information to your trademark or patent attorney or give him separate access to our customer information system so that he can access the data available there.
The direct connection of your trademarks and domains saves you time and money, the relevant information is quickly visible to you and your lawyers and the environment of your trademarks and domains is monitored. Ultimately, you can secure strategic competitive advantages in this way.
With registered trademarks, companies differentiate their products and services from those of their competitors and create trust among their customers. Registered trademarks protect products and services from free riders. In order to fulfil these functions, trademarks must be registered in official registers. Here you can see which trademarks are registered for whom in which period of time, in which classes and countries, associated contact persons are named and many other details are visible.
We prepare this data for you in our systems so that the most important information is clearly presented to you: You – and also your trademark attorney or our partner law firm – are automatically informed about relevant deadlines, can view the current status or oversee your trademark portfolio and the related processes.
The direct connection between your trademarks and your domains allows you to develop and check your individual domain and trademark strategy internally or with the help of external experts. In this way you can further expand your markets and always be one step faster than your competitors. After all, trademarks and domains are unique: there is neither the same trademark with the same classes in the same countries nor the same domain name under the same domain extension.
The important step after successful trademark registration is to check the – above all abusive – use of the protected or confusable terms or representations. As trademark owner, you will be informed if there is an overlap with other trademarks lately applied for. Only identical trademark entries are prevented by the trademark registers. The trademark owner is responsible for monitoring the registration of terms or representations that can be confused.
We automatically and regularly monitor the environment of your registered trademarks and provide detailed reports in our customer interface. Here you can quickly and clearly identify who has applied for similar, potentially confusable terms or representations and, if necessary, initiate further steps. The reports are available for download, you can process them internally or forward them to your external consultants. In this way, you can act in good time, inform customers and other interested parties and counteract a possible loss of reputation.
The Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) is a supra-regional register in which trademark owners must register their registered trademarks if they want to take advantage of the new domain extensions. In the first step, third parties are notified of the trademark you have registered immediately before registration. Should they nevertheless register the domain, you as trademark owner will be informed by TMCH that a corresponding domain has been registered. This gives you an overview of who has registered your trademarks under which domain extensions and you can use this information to decide whether you want to take further action. Furthermore, with trademarks registered in TMCH, you have the possibility to be given preferential treatment when introducing new domain extensions in the sunrise phases.
We take over the registration of your trademarks in the TMCH as well as the necessary renewals, so that you do not lose the overview with a number of more than 1,000 new domain extensions.
Third-party registered domains can be a big problem: Such domains can possibly be misused, damage your reputation or ultimately lead to a loss of revenue.
There are several ways to take over a domain registered by a third party. One is the arbitration procedure (disputes) at WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), which can be time- and cost-saving compared to a legal dispute in the respective country. Especially in international jurisdictions with different jurisdictions, legal disputes can last a very long time and ultimately quickly increase costs.
We support you with our many years of experience and advise with your lawyers or our partner law firm the best possible way to successfully register the domains concerned.
In the field of trademark and domain management, legal aspects are not to be neglected. This may involve domain or trademark disputes, the obligation to provide an imprint on the website or data protection issues.
Even if, for example, a domain purchase is often a cheap alternative in domain disputes, sometimes only the legal process can help to protect your reputation and your trademarks.
Our partner firm specialises in media, trademark and Internet law and will be happy to advise you on possible legal steps or provide support for your legal department. Due to the combination of trademark and domain law as well as the excellent reputation of our leading partner law firm in Germany in the field of Internet law, your trademark management is also in the best legal hands with us.