New Brand Clearance
When clearing new brands for our clients, we carefully consider and advise on the appropriate search strategy to adopt. Whilst we have cost-effective ready-made clearance packages available, often special considerations require searches to address particular factors such as:
- The nature of the new mark to be used (e.g. words, slogan, logos, colours, sound or shape);
- The planned duration, geographic scope and intensity of that use;
- Whether local language variants are an issue;
- The time available pre-launch;
- The budget available; and
- The level of acceptable risk.
We have access to advanced trade mark and foreign case law search tools. With these, we can conduct high level 'knock out' searches extremely quickly. For more thorough searches, we obtain and analyse more in-depth reports, which can take a little longer.
We have built up and work regularly with an extensive network of leading specialist local attorneys. Whilst we frequently coordinate reports from large numbers of local attorneys, we can also produce reports based on central global assessments made by lawyers with considerable experience of international trade mark matters.
Our lawyers advising on clearance and filing strategies have real IP litigation and transactional experience. This means we are well placed to anticipate future litigation risks. The same lawyers are close to the day-to-day portfolio management. By using the same integrated team, we get to know our clients’ business objections, their people and their risk profiles, so that we can provide commercial, consistent and reliable advice.
The result is a response that suits the business people's needs, namely that:
- Is clear and succinct (which can readily be passed on internally by in-house counsel);
- Provides an answer, being robust and without prevarication (we do not “sit on the fence”); and
- Is practical (we think laterally about ways to overcome apparent obstacles).