We accompany a trade mark throughout its whole life – from the moment of choice to the legal implementation of the rights arising from it.


Choosing a Trade mark
The first step sets the course: First of all, on the basis of your experiences, your in-formation and in our consultations, a choice is made of a few appropriate signs, such as names or logos, colours, three-dimensional packaging or melodies, which you may want to use for a certain product, the presentation of a shop or the start-up of a company. This first selection process will take place either on your premises or with the help of an external company. If you wish, we shall be pleased to help you find adequate contacts. One of our recommendations for the development of trade marks and trade mark appearances would be the Trade Mark Agency BIALAS RUNGE PARTNER brand design. Legal assistance would be provided by us already from the early stages.

Review

Generally, after having narrowed the choice down to a few appropriate signs during the early stages, various legal questions need to be answered: Can we use these signs? Might a third party already have protection for these or similar signs? Can a third party forbid us to use the sign of our choice? Finding an answer to these and other questions at an early stage will help you avoid trade mark conflicts as well as resulting costs. Here, we would, for example, be pleased to assist you in and advise you on the establishing and assessing of the legal situation as to protective rights by conducting and analysing identity and similarity searches and surveys on the use of a trade mark both in Germany and abroad. You would then receive our recommenda-tion on these issues which, depending on the emphasis, from a legal point of view shows an advantageous ranking of the reviewed signs, examines potential infringe-ment problems and assists you in initiating the next steps.

Trade Mark Applications

After choosing a new sign and, as the case may be, an alternative sign, we apply on your behalf for registration of the sign in Germany and abroad. Here, we take into account your specific circumstances: the characteristic features of the product, your business appearance under the new sign as well as your previous and future business areas. This will be reflected in the Lists of Goods and Services which we develop and which are a prerequisite for every trade mark application. A strategy for the application will then be developed in collaboration with you, which is especially necessary for applications which have implications abroad. We would supervise in close consultation with you the progress of the application throughout the entire ap-plication procedure, which ends with the registration of the trade mark.

Trade Mark Maintenance

Trade marks are valuable and should therefore be maintained. This should preferably happen on several levels: By including your trade marks in our trade mark administration programme, you can be certain that they will not be cancelled due to non-payment of renewal fees, and that amendments of laws, such as for example reclassifications, will be paid attention to. We will remind you of the expiration of the five years' period as regards proving the use of a trade mark and respond to changes in trade marks concerning their appearance on the market, such as modernisation, with recommendations as to the best possible protection strategy. By using our Client Area on the internet, you can access your trade mark portfolio independently of place and time. For obtaining a strong trade mark it is essential to set up a trade mark watch. The trade mark watch puts you in a position to take note at an early stage of identical or similar trade marks of third parties, of which we will inform you following review by an attorney. Thus, we help you to avoid, in particular, confusions with other trade marks, dilution or exploitation of the good name of your trade mark. And last but not least, we will enforce your trade mark against third parties before court, if necessary.