Yes, since trademark registries are publicly available, you can perform trademark monitoring yourself. However, we'd recommend considering a service for the following reasons:
- Time savings: Outsourcing trademark monitoring means you'll have more time to focus on growing your business. Keep in mind it's not a one-and-done thing; if you want proper protection, you'll have to perform monitoring at least once a month - and in the US, where the opposition period is exceptionally short, even more frequently than that.
- Calibrated results: As more and more applications get filed each year globally, it's easy to get overwhelmed by monitoring results. It shouldn't take you hours each month to go through all the newly filed applications. A good report will filter out what you don't need.
- All-in-one-ness: You don't have to search multiple IP registers each time. This is useful if you own a trademark in numerous countries, but not only then. For example, if you own a German trademark, you'll probably want to monitor Germany's IP office (DPMA) as well as the EU's IP office (EUIPO) since both German and EU marks can infringe upon yours.
If you are interested in giving a monitoring service a chance, check out our Trademark Watch.
