Trademark monitoring
Trademark monitoring for brands that cannot keep a lawyer on retainer
Someone applies for a name that reads like yours. The application publishes, a clock starts, and nobody tells you. Knockoff runs a US trademark watch against your brand names every day, reads the new filings, and puts the close ones in front of you with the USPTO record attached.
Trademark watch is included from $299 a month. Monthly billing, no contract, 30-day money-back guarantee.
US serial 98/412,556
Word mark
Walnut Works Co.
Filed for: desk organizers, wood goods
Similar to your mark Published for opposition today
The filing you never hear about
A copycat with a plan does not stop at your photos. They pick a name close enough to yours that a shopper cannot tell the difference, and then they file it. Same word with a letter changed. Your name buried inside a longer one. A different spelling that sounds identical when a customer says it out loud.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes every one of those applications. That is the point of publishing: the register is public so the people affected can look. Nobody at the USPTO checks whether you exist, and nobody writes to tell you an application landed. The window to object is short, and it is the cheapest moment in the entire life of the problem to do anything.
Miss it and the same fight costs a great deal more. A registered lookalike mark stops being a form you object to and becomes a party with paperwork. It can hold the name on a marketplace, contest your own application later, and answer your complaint with a registration certificate. Founders describe finding out years afterward, from a customer asking which of the two brands is the real one.
Watching the register by hand is not a job a founder does. It means a daily search on several spellings, reading applications that have nothing to do with you, and knowing which ones matter. That is why the watch exists, and why it belongs next to the rest of the copying rather than in a separate bill. If you are still sizing up the category, start with what brand protection solutions cost.
What Knockoff's US trademark watch does
You enter your brand names, and the marks you already hold if you hold any. Every day the watch takes the USPTO's own record of newly filed applications and reads it against your names.
- It reads for confusion, not for exact copies. An alert opens on the same name, on your name sitting inside a longer one, on a spelling a letter or two away, and on a name that sounds like yours when spoken. A copycat rarely files your name letter for letter.
- It ranks by what the filing covers. An application for the kind of goods you actually sell is the one that can take your name off a shelf. Those come to the top. A distant business with a similar word is still shown, and it is shown as the lower-priority thing it is.
- Every alert carries the record. The mark as filed, the serial number, the filing date, the goods it covers, why it matched, and a link straight to the USPTO file. You can read the application yourself in a minute, or forward it to an attorney who will not have to go looking.
- Alerts land in your inbox and wait in one queue. When the watch flags a filing, you get an email. Open alerts also sit in the app with a count on them until you act on one or clear it. A filing that reappears in a later day's record does not open a second alert, so a cleared alert stays cleared.
- It watches forward. The watch covers applications filed from the day your brand names are in place. It is not a clearance search of the existing register, and it is not sold as one.
The rest of the product runs on the same connection. Your Shopify catalog syncs, your product photos become the reference for the marketplace side, and the trademark watch runs on your names in parallel. See how Knockoff works end to end for how the marketplace lane finishes, and the surfaces your brand is exposed on online for the lanes either side of this one. An alert is a warning, not an action. When the same people are already selling under your name, the next step is usually sending a trademark cease and desist letter, and there is a template and a decision framework for that.
Can't I just check the register myself, or let Amazon handle it?
You can search the USPTO register for free today, and you should, before you pick a name. Search is not a watch. It answers what is on file this afternoon, and it answers only the spelling you happened to type. The problem is not one search; it is the search you have to remember to run every week for years.
Amazon Brand Registry sits on the other side of this. It is real and worth enrolling in, and it works from a registered trademark rather than watching for new ones. It covers Amazon and nothing else, it tells you nothing about a lookalike application, and the noticing still belongs to you. Every other marketplace runs its own separate program on the same terms. The full checklist of what enrollment takes is in the Amazon Brand Registry requirements.
Trademark firms sell a watch as a standalone service, priced per mark, per year, and usually bundled with the legal work you may never need. That is the right purchase when a fight is already running. It is a strange first purchase for a brand whose actual daily problem is six sellers using its photos.
What it costs
Knockoff is a signup form and a monthly price. Watching your product photos across marketplaces starts at $99 a month on the Watch plan. US trademark watch is included from $299 a month on Enforce, alongside prepared takedowns with no monthly cap, and it is included on Dominate at $799 a month with copycat storefront detection on top.
The registration itself is a separate bill, paid to the USPTO rather than to us. Work out what a trademark costs to file and keep before you budget for the watch on top. Start with which trademark class your products belong in, because the fee is charged per class.
No contract, no trial, monthly billing, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Enterprise brand protection in this category is sold on a demo call and an annual contract, and merchants who have taken that call report quotes in the tens of thousands a year. See what each plan includes, or have the takedown prepared for you if the marketplace side is the urgent part.
What Knockoff does not do
Worth reading before you pay for anything in this category, here or anywhere else.
- The watch covers US filings only. It reads the USPTO's record of new US applications. There is no coverage of any register outside the United States.
- It is monitoring and alerts, not legal work. Knockoff files no oppositions, no extensions of time and no applications, and it is not a law firm. Nothing here is legal advice.
- It does not promise to catch every filing. The watch reads what the USPTO publishes and flags what reads close to your names. No honest vendor can guarantee a detection, on this surface or any other.
- It works with Shopify stores only today. The connection is Shopify, one store per account, and your catalog is what gets watched on the marketplace side.
- Trademark watch is one lane of a broader product. Most of what Knockoff does is stolen product photos and copycat stores. Buy it for that, and take this as part of the same subscription.
- Takedowns are yours to submit. On the marketplace side you approve every case and file every notice yourself, in one click, through the platform's own form.
Questions
What is trademark monitoring? +
Watching new trademark applications as they are filed and getting told when one sits close to a name you already use. Somebody files a mark, the application publishes, and a limited window opens in which objecting is cheap and straightforward. Trademark monitoring exists because nobody sends you that news. Without a watch you find out later, usually from a customer who thought the other brand was you.
Do I need a registered trademark to use it? +
No. The watch runs against your brand names as you enter them, registered or not, so a brand with no filings of its own still gets told when a lookalike application shows up. If you do hold US registrations you can add them, and Knockoff checks each one against the USPTO record. Registrations sharpen the ranking, because a filing that covers the same kind of goods you sell is the one worth reading first.
Does Knockoff file oppositions? +
No. Knockoff monitors and alerts. Filing an opposition or an extension of time is a legal step you take with a trademark attorney, and the alert gives you the serial number and the USPTO record so that conversation starts with facts instead of a search.
Is this legal advice? +
No. Knockoff is not a law firm and nothing on this site or in the product is legal advice. An alert says a new application reads close to your name. What that means for your brand, and what to do about it, is a question for a lawyer.
Which plan includes trademark monitoring, and what does it cost? +
US trademark watch is on Enforce at $299 a month and Dominate at $799 a month. The $99 Watch plan covers stolen product photos on marketplaces and does not include it. Billing is monthly, there is no contract, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Does it cover trademark filings in other countries? +
Not yet. This is a US trademark watch, built on the USPTO's own daily record of new applications. There is no coverage of the EUIPO, the UKIPO, WIPO or any national register outside the United States, and this page will say so when that changes.
How far back does it look? +
It looks forward. The watch starts the day your brand names are in place and covers applications filed from then on. It is not a search of the existing register, which is what a clearance search does before you pick a name.
Is trademark monitoring the same as watching for stolen product photos? +
Different lane, same problem. A lookalike filing is somebody staking a claim on your name. A stolen photo is somebody selling against your listing today. Knockoff runs both, plus copycat storefronts and AI answers, so one subscription covers the paperwork and the marketplace at once.
