By Matt Fates, Partner, and Eon Mattis, Associate
Summary
A brand is often a company's most valuable asset. Consider Nike's Swoosh or McDonald's Golden Arches. While trademarking is crucial for business longevity, the process is complex and risky without legal expertise. With global IP (Intellectual Property) filing activity exceeding 18 million in recent years, the need for accessible and effective trademark filing and monitoring is clear. However, hiring a trademark attorney can be costly, with comprehensive searches reaching $5,000 and taking weeks. Even with professional help, outdated tools and processes make trademark protection expensive and time-consuming. The combination of lengthy, costly searches, limited tooling options, and growing brand protection needs makes this industry prime for disruption.
Revolutionizing Trademark Search and Protection
We at Innospark are excited about Haloo, a LegalTech platform revolutionizing trademark search and protection. Haloo leverages AI (Artificial Intelligence) to emulate the expertise of a trademark attorney through a sophisticated blend of algorithms, rules-based systems, and curated data. This innovation enables users to perform trademark searches at a fraction of the cost of traditional tools, delivering what clients call a 'gold standard' report in under 60 seconds. We're particularly enthusiastic about Haloo's potential to democratize brand protection, making it financially practical for SMBs who previously couldn't afford the associated legal fees. Additionally, this platform allows attorneys to focus on their core competency: giving valuable legal advice to their clients.
Why We're Betting on Haloo
Leadership is paramount in any successful venture, and Haloo exemplifies this under the guidance of CEO Julie MacDonnell. With over 15 years of experience as a trademark attorney in both large and boutique firms, Julie brings invaluable domain expertise to the table. This insider perspective means Haloo is well-suited to understanding both the legal and business needs of their customers and partners. Additionally, Julie has assembled a formidable team, attracting top-tier AI and SWE talent. Despite its modest size, this team has successfully serviced hundreds of satisfied paying customers, all eagerly anticipating Haloo's future product offerings. Furthermore, the company's technological prowess is clear in its platform, which uses complex NLP-based methodologies. By combining over 50 in-house and off the shelf techniques with patterns learned from expert-annotated corpus, Haloo's system can perform exhaustive search queries in seconds. This capability, coupled with ongoing real-time implementation of new rules, positions Haloo at the forefront of trademark technology innovation.
Market Opportunity in a Laggard Industry
The trademark search and watch market is experiencing significant growth, with projections indicating a CAGR of 13.5% and potential billions in value in the coming years. This expansion is primarily attributed to an increased recognition of the critical importance of brand protection and intellectual property rights, particularly considering rising counterfeit concerns and the proliferation of artificial intelligence using public data.
In discussions with industry experts, a recurring theme emerged: most current solutions rely heavily on manual data review processes, which introduce a significant margin for error and omission in a field where precision is paramount. These experts emphasized that the role of an attorney is to navigate complex legal nuances rather than provide binary assessments. However, the efficacy of their work is largely contingent upon the quality and comprehensiveness of information provided by existing third-party tools. This dependency becomes particularly challenging when the incumbent tools are cumbersome to use, costly to maintain, time-intensive, and prone to inaccuracies. However, they felt that this new wave of AI-powered LegalTech tools seems different from earlier iterations and should be able to address current industry pain points.
Haloo specifically was credited with matching or exceeding the quality of legacy solutions yet producing results far faster and at a fraction of the cost, making Haloo not just a nice-to-have, but an essential tool.
Looking over the Horizon
Our investment in Haloo represents a strategic bet on the future of LegalTech. We are confident that Haloo's innovative approach, coupled with the vast market opportunity and the strength of its team, positions the company for substantial growth. Haloo's platform democratizes brand protection by making it accessible to many SMB owners who previously couldn't afford it due to high associated costs. This accessibility helps prevent future legal troubles related to trademark infringement.
We look forward to supporting Haloo in its mission to transform the trademark search industry and, by extension, contribute to the broader evolution of LegalTech and AI, ultimately improving legal access for all.
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