In recent years, trademark owners have made a number of aggressive enforcement moves, and companies need to be prepared with a response strategy.
Companies and individuals often want to use various components as part of their marketing initiatives or for other purposes. To that end, they might utilize images or other elements that are available for public use. They believe these elements are part of the public domain and are not anyone else’s intellectual property.
If you’re using an image or some other element, and you suddenly receive notice that an individual or entity is bringing legal action against you for trademark infringement, that’s alarming. You might not be sure of the best path forward.
We’ll talk about how to respond if you are facing trademark infringement.
Look for a Trademark Lawyer
The first thing you’ll generally want to do in the scenario we’ve described is to contact a knowledgeable trademark lawyer. There are law firms and lawyers out there who deal with these situations every day. Some firms or attorneys even deal exclusively with trademark law.
Assuming you don’t know one of these lawyers or firms already, you’ll need to locate one. Let’s say you live in Melbourne. You could enlist the help of some skilled Melbourne trademark lawyers to help you in this endeavor.
You can look at client reviews for the firm or lawyers you’ve found before selecting the one that seems best for your situation. You might also go on their websites and see how professional they appear to be before calling or emailing them.
Contact Your Top Choice
Once you’ve researched some likely candidates, reach out to the one that seems like the best option. You can meet with them in person, or perhaps you’ll speak to this lawyer via phone or a Zoom call.
You can explain to them what happened, and they’ll decide whether they want to represent you. If they feel like they’re a good candidate to take on your case, they’ll give you some further instructions at that time. If they don’t want to represent you, you can try some other firms on your list.
Take Your Lawyer’s Advice
Because of the nature of trademark law, it’s not particularly likely that you’ll end up in front of a judge pleading your case. Instead, once you have a lawyer representing you, you can rely on them to negotiate with the party who claims that you used one of their trademarks without their consent.
If your lawyer feels like the person or entity bringing suit against you doesn’t have a case, they will inform them of that. If they think that, based on the evidence, the individual or entity does have a valid case against you, your attorney will then try to resolve the situation with as little pain for you as possible. That will probably involve you paying a sum of money to the party whose trademark you infringed.
This sounds a little scary, but trademark infringement is hardly a capital crime. A competent lawyer should be able to get you out of this situation with little difficulty.
