Avoiding a trademark infringement from occurring is crucial to building up trust in the market. There have been instances where brands have unknowingly infringed on other brands due to a variety of reasons.
To avoid trademark infringement, the company needs to work on the following before carrying forward the process of trademark registration or usage in the market.
There should be a thorough research of the trademark that is decided to be used to avoid confusion or clash with other existing marks.
The Trademark database should be well searched and if similar marks are found, then one needs to analyze the features that can cause infringement like appearance, sound, concept, etc.
A religious trademark search is inevitable.
A comparison of actual product and services to be registered or registered are done with related products and services to find out the identical features that might lead to infringement.
Herein, the class number of registered product is not compared.
The strength of your trademark is inversely proportionate to the likeliness of getting infringed.
There are three levels in ascending order, which determines the strength of a trademark, they are:
The lesser is the strength; it is more likely to be infringed.
At times, you will see people calling up a wrong company for a similar product, it is then, that you need to realize that the trademark is directing to confusion and misguiding the consumers.
This might lead to infringement, and to avoid that, precautions are to be taken to curb such events or situations.
Avoiding trademark infringement indeed requires a basic understanding of the laws that govern the trademark registration and judgement. Before initiating a fresh, make sure you do not get too close to an existing trademark.