The trademark department within a company plays an important role in protecting and enforcing brand rights, including trademarks, service marks, and marks in use. Some trademark departments also track registered domain names as well as copyrights.
Trademark management software should empower the trademark department to better serve the needs of their clients, secure proper rights, notify them of important dates, and help them implement the compliance program effectively.
While trademark registration alone can work well for your law firms; Corporate legal departments should consider trademark management software to help them achieve complete lifecycle management.
Here are the top 5 features needed for a strong brand management software:
Comprehensive functionality
Good brand management software should have comprehensive features and functionalities for trademark search request submission and review process, trademark registration, electronic trademark file repository, renewals, trademark licensing, trademark control and enforcement. , anti-counterfeiting, domain and copyright management.
Trademark registration should include robust registration features for all major jurisdictions, including regular updates of trademarks to local and international laws related to registration. The system should keep track of all important check-in dates (legal and software reminders) and send reminder emails to pre-defined team members. Also, for process optimization, the system should provide checklists at various stages, such as submission, action response, and award notice.
Collaboration and workflow
Business users must be able to submit an online trademark application form to initiate trademark applications, including the ability to upload multiple documents. Reviewers should be able to route the request to multiple teams for search and/or approval. Details about the search performed, including the search results, should be stored for future use.
For departments that use outside counsel, the system must provide a workflow for hiring outside counsel for a trademark prosecution case. External consultants must be able to view and work on assignments and upload drafts, responses, and costs online. Each action must send automatic file notifications to designated individuals within the department.
Reports and analysis
The brand management system should provide search, reporting, and analytical tools to analyze the portfolio as well as costs. In addition to standard (“canned”) reports, the system should provide an intuitive interface for customizing existing reports without the help of the vendor, provide ad hoc searches and reports, as well as the ability to export search/report data to Excel, PDF etc
Configuration (and not customization)
The system must allow configuration of the online trademark application form, registration, and approval workflows by application administrators. When selecting the best trademark management software for your needs, make sure you understand the difference between configuration and customization and can clearly differentiate where certain features are located.