Competing interests

The precise wording of a letter of consent should be carefully considered.

Company requesting letter of consent (requestor) wants:	Company providing letter of consent (provider) wants:
Broad consent to all goods/services covered in the requestor’s application	To limit the consent only to those goods/services specifically needed by the requestor
Worldwide consent	Australia (and/or New Zealand) consent only
No commitment (silent on issue)	Commitment that the requestor will never use or seek to register the applied-for trade mark in respect of the provider’s own core company products (worldwide)
No commitment (silent on issue)	No challenge, ever, to its use or registration of the provider’s own trademark(s) (worldwide)
No commitment (silent on issue) or to offer to pay a fixed amount to cover the provider’s legal costs	Legal costs covered, in full, by the requestor
Consent to registration of a word mark in standard characters, and to logo version(s)	To limit consent only to the mark as applied for
Consent to registration of future versions of the logo	No commitment (silent on issue) as they cannot know what future versions will be
Consent to use with additional descriptive text and graphical embellishments	No commitment (silent on issue)
For both sides, costs increase if negotiation is required – it is less expensive to foresee and meet likely requirements of the other side in the first instance