How do I monitor my trade mark?

Monitoring is more than just waiting for registration

Monitoring a mark means: continuously checking whether new trade mark applications appear that resemble your own mark, so that action can be taken in time. A registration with the BOIP or the EUIPO grants a right in itself, but that right is not automatically enforced on behalf of the mark holder. The office that registers a mark does not itself check whether a later applicant files something comparable — that control remains the responsibility of the mark holder themselves.

That is where monitoring comes in: periodically searching new applications in the registers, with the public search tool TMview as one of the places where those applications become visible. Anyone who misses such a similar application risks that it will end up alongside their own mark, or that later disputes arise over who was first. In addition to detecting new, similar applications, monitoring also includes keeping track of your own registration: a mark must be renewed at some point, and there is no automatic reminder from the register for that.

Why this follows from how the registers operate

This approach follows directly from how the trade mark registers are structured: the EUIPO and the BOIP register applications and keep track of who has rights where, but they do not actively signal similarity between new and existing marks belonging to third parties. TMview provides the public search tool across the different registers for that purpose, but consulting it is something that the mark holder — or someone on their behalf — must do repeatedly to keep seeing new applications.