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19 May 2018TrademarksBenoit Fallenius

The shifting world of trademark search

The trademark search and watch practice is changing with increasing speed in trademark-focused law firms and in-house practices. This has been happening for a while but the pace is picking up.

Trademark search used to be a manual practice, largely dependent on the person creating the search query. Today the search query can be created by statistically-built algorithms, which will also rank the results and limit the ’noise’.

Time can instead be spent on qualitative analysis and on the client relationship. The focus is shifting to the actual added value provided by the law firm, which is of course good for both law firm and client. Three driving forces are behind this change.

Cost pressure from the law firm clients

Small and large clients are increasingly sensitive to excessive trademark search and watch costs. New brands are expected to be created and cleared quickly, at a fraction of what it cost before, but with retained quality. As a consequence, law firms no longer sign three-year, costly contracts with the search provider. And waiting three days for a full search report is often not an option.

Free searches powered by patent and trademark offices

Law firms and brand owners are switching their identical and simple fuzzy searching to free alternatives. Why sign a three-year contract and pay a lot for something that patent and trademark offices offer for free?

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