- within Corporate/Commercial Law topic(s)
At the beginning of each financial year, every business must determine and implement an annual budget for intellectual property (IP). With cost control a top priority for all businesses, how should brand owners approach IP budgets and specifically trademark budget allocation for external IP services?
Clearly, brand owners will need to budget for recurring fees, such as trademark and design renewals. However, there are some tasks that businesses often overlook when preparing their annual IP budget. By considering trademark budget allocation in advance, you can avoid the potential knock-on costs of failing to budget for these aspects down the line.
Preparing a Budget for IP Services
- IP Cost Management
Any IP services outsourced to external partners should be factored into your annual IP budget. In fact, by including these services in your initial IP budget, you could actually save your business money in the long term; for example, by controlling costs up front, minimizing internal management or negotiation time, and ensuring you're not overpaying for these services in the first place.
Here's where IP cost management services—such as fee audits, benchmarking, negotiation, compliance, and forecasting—can play a crucial role. By assessing how the fees you currently pay to service providers, including patent and trademark agents, compare to industry standards, you can potentially reduce, as well as forecast and control, your future expenditure.
- Trademark Searching
Whether before registering a new trademark or during the term of protection of an existing mark, conducting a thorough trademark search is integral to your mark's success.
Many IP service firms offer trademark searching services; for example, running analyst-driven searches on your business's behalf. This includes searching all necessary databases to ensure that no stone is left unturned when clearing a new mark. Other IP service providers offer access to trademark search software—such as the Markify Trademark Search Platform—so that you can run or order your own algorithm-driven searches.
By allocating budget for trademark searching services or software, you can avoid the risks and costs associated with conducting trademark searches incorrectly or in haste, and potentially make significant cost savings by negotiating fees in advance.
Not only are trademark search services valuable if they highlight a potential issue, but they can also free up the time that your employees and external counsel spend on conducting onerous searches.
- Trademark Watching and Brand Protection
Similar to trademark searching, trademark watching services and monitoring software(including online brand protection tools) can significantly reduce the workload of your internal team and external counsel, and potentially save you money in the process.
Monitoring and enforcing the use of trademarks online and offline can be a laborious and potentially costly task. Failure to forecast and budget for these services in advance could easily result in a significant proportion of your external counsel and employee time being spent on painstakingly trawling resources to identify or review possible infringements.
Including trademark watching and online brand protection in your annual budget will greatly free up such overheads, while also ensuring that you can rest easy knowing that the illegitimate use of your mark is being constantly monitored.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
