A company’s trademark department plays an important role in protecting and enforcing trademark rights, including registered trademarks, service marks, and trademarks in use. Some trademark departments also track registered domain names and copyrights.

Trademark management software should empower the trademark department to better serve the needs of its customers, secure appropriate 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 brand management software to help them achieve complete lifecycle management.

Here are the top 5 features required for robust brand management software:

Comprehensive functionality

Good trademark management software should have full features and functions for trademark search request submission and review process, trademark registration, filing of trademark electronic case files, renewals, trademark licensing, enforcement, and surveillance trademarks, fight against counterfeiting, domain management and copyright.

Trademark registration should include robust registration functions for all major jurisdictions, including regular updates to local and international laws related to trademark registration. The system should track all important registration dates (legal and soft reminders) and send reminder emails to predefined team members. In addition, for process optimization, the system should provide multi-stage checklists such as submission, response to actions, and authorization notice.

Collaboration and workflow

Business users must be able to submit a trademark application form online to initiate trademark applications, including the ability to upload multiple documents. Reviewers should be able to submit 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 attorneys, the system should provide a workflow for hiring an outside attorney for a trademark prosecution case. External consultants must be able to view and work on assigned tasks and upload drafts, responses, and costs online. Each action should send automatic registration notifications to designated individuals within the department.

Reports and analytics

The brand management system should provide searches, reports, and analytical tools to analyze the portfolio and costs. In addition to standard (“canned”) reports, the system should provide an intuitive interface to customize existing reports without vendor assistance, provide ad hoc reports and searches, as well as the ability to export search / report data to Excel, PDF, etc.

Configuration (and not customization)

The system should allow for online trademark application form setup, registration, and approval workflows by application administrators. When selecting the best brand management software for your needs, make sure you understand the difference between setup and customization and that you can clearly differentiate where certain features are located.