From the course: Understanding Trademarks: A Deeper Dive

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What is due diligence?

What is due diligence?

From the course: Understanding Trademarks: A Deeper Dive

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What is due diligence?

- As I've discussed already, trademark rights arise from use. As such, before you can assert rights, you must be sure that no one else has created trademark rights prior to your use. Thus, if someone else has used the same mark, they've created trademark rights, and you have to consider whether their prior rights will be a problem for your proposed use. Searching for prior users of similar marks is referred to as due diligence. Why conduct due diligence? Because it can cost a lot of money to change your name after you've already started using it. Lighted signs, ads, websites, printed material and more. Further, imagine how much it will cost in lost business because of the name change. However, it is common that people chose a name without doing any due diligence. I could think of a case where the cost to change the client's name was over 500,000 dollars, and that did not even include the cost of getting the public to identify their business under its new name. So, you need to do your…

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