Trademark watch for Australian businesses

A named person on our team owns your file and reviews everything that leaves it. Software does a real share of the grinding underneath it — coding, matching, flagging the obvious gaps — but nothing regulated happens without a person’s judgement, and nothing here is signed or filed by an algorithm.

No — trademark watch is operational work inside your books, not something submitted to ATO. Where a filing does sit downstream of it, inside trademarks & ip more broadly, that stays with your registered BAS or tax agent, never with us.

Whatever you already run. Most commonly QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage, Zoho Books and a handful of others — we work inside your system rather than moving you onto one of our own.

A short, free read-only look at what you already have, and a written note on what we found. A scoping call decides the size of the engagement — nothing here commits you to anything.

There is no published price for trademark watch — it depends on volume, how many entities are involved, and how far behind the books are. We quote after the read-only review, which is free.

Trademark watch sits inside trademarks & ip, alongside Trademark search & filing (TM Headstart), Examination adverse report response, Trademark renewal. Most clients end up buying the category as a whole rather than one leaf at a time, but starting narrow is fine.

A watch monitors IP Australia's new filings for marks that conflict with yours, so you can oppose one before it registers. An ABF Notice of Objection is a separate, later step — a standing instruction to Australian Border Force to seize suspected counterfeit imports at the border, and it only becomes available once your mark is actually registered.

Two months from the date IP Australia advertises it as accepted in the Official Journal of Trade Marks. That's the deadline to file a Notice of Intention to Oppose; miss it and the application proceeds toward registration.

We coordinate the logistics and the fee payment for the Notice of Intention to Oppose, but drafting the Statement of Grounds and Particulars and running the evidence rounds is a registered trade marks attorney or AU legal practitioner's work — that's where the matter goes once a hit is confirmed material.

Yes. The ABF Notice of Objection scheme is only available to the owner (or an authorised user) of a registered Australian trade mark — an application that's still pending doesn't qualify. It also covers copyright works and protected Olympic/major-event indicia, but for a trade mark specifically, registration comes first.

It's the document that has to accompany an ABF Notice of Objection, and by signing it you agree to cover ABF's seizure-related costs — storage, transport, destruction — and to indemnify the importer if a seizure is later found unjustified. That's real, open-ended cost exposure in a binding legal document, so we route it through an AU lawyer for review before a client signs, every time.

No upfront lodgement fee. The real cost exposure sits in the Deed of Undertaking — the costs you're committing to cover if a seizure actually happens — not in a filing fee at the point of lodgement.

Four years from acceptance. It can be re-lodged before that period expires, or withdrawn early if you no longer need it. We track the expiry date so re-lodgement is scheduled ahead of time rather than left to lapse.

ABF notifies both you and the importer. The importer can consent to the goods being treated as forfeited, which resolves it quickly, or dispute the seizure — if they dispute it, you have to commence court action within a set statutory window to have the goods forfeited or destroyed, or they're released back to the importer. We prepare the initial Notice and evidence; a dispute that reaches court is your lawyer's matter.

Both, when they're part of your registered or pending AU portfolio. The watch profile is built against everything filed with IP Australia — wordmark, stylisation, design elements — not the name alone.

For a watch: your existing IP Australia application or registration details — the application/registration number, the marks, and the classes filed. For an ABF Notice of Objection: your registration certificate or extract, and any authorised-user documentation if the rights holder isn't the entity lodging the Notice. Nothing is inferred without your actual IP Australia record in front of us.

Not entirely — a registered mark can still be challenged later through a non-use removal application under section 92 (if it's genuinely not being used) or, for other grounds, rectification. But that's a slower, more evidentiary route than opposing inside the original 2-month window, and it's a registered trade marks attorney's territory once it's contested.