Should I consider TM Watching?
Although it might be thought that ownership of a trade mark registration will prevent somebody else registering the same or a similar trade mark, this is not actually the case. Trade Mark Watching will alert you to the existence of a new application for registration which might conflict with your rights, to enable you to take action early to prevent new rights being granted to a third party.
Although many countries do carry out searches and reject later applications which conflict with earlier registrations, many other countries do not do this and leave it to the trade mark owners to police their own rights. In particular, when a new application for registration is made to the UK or European Trade Marks Registry, the Registry carries out a search but will not reject an application because of an earlier similar registration.
It is therefore possible for a trade mark to be registered in the United Kingdom, or throughout the European Union, even though it is confusingly similar to an earlier registration. Therefore, we strongly recommend that trade mark proprietors subscribe to our watching service that monitors published trade mark applications so that action may be taken to oppose an application for a confusingly similar trade mark.