A European trademark alert monitors the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) for new trademark applications that could conflict with your registered EU mark. When a potentially conflicting filing is published, you receive a notification with the details and your deadline to act.
The EUIPO is the trademark office responsible for EU trade marks, which give protection across all 27 EU member states with a single registration. Roughly 180,000 new applications are filed each year. That is around 1,400 new filings published every week.
EUIPO does not proactively notify existing trademark holders when a similar mark is filed. Finding conflicts is the responsibility of the rights holder. Without a European trademark alert service, you would need to search EUIPO manually, consistently, every working day.
Once a trademark application is published in the EU Trade Marks Bulletin, owners of earlier rights have 90 days to file a formal opposition. After that window closes, the application proceeds to registration unless the applicant withdraws it.
A European trademark alert gives you enough advance notice to assess the conflict, consult a lawyer if needed, and file opposition within that window. Alerts that arrive after the deadline are too late to act on through opposition.
A good alert service covers:
Sentin covers all of these. Text similarity uses phonetic and visual string matching. Logo similarity uses AI image comparison against EUIPO filing images. Only filings in your registered Nice classes are checked.
Any brand owner with an EU trade mark registration should have monitoring in place. This includes product brands, service brands, tech companies, fashion labels, food producers, and anyone who has invested in a European trademark right and wants to protect it actively.
Sentin monitors EUIPO every morning and sends a European trademark alert when a conflicting filing appears. Free to start.
Start European trademark monitoring →See also: Automatic trademark alerts · The opposition deadline