Legal
Watching the open web for uses of your mark
A worker sweeps public sources on a schedule, captures dated evidence of each use it finds, and hands you a file. Whether to act is a legal decision.
What the worker does
An AI worker in Polaris monitors use of a brand name by running scheduled sweeps across web search and Instagram, capturing each apparent use with the URL, the surrounding text and the date observed, and delivering a dated evidence file as a comment on the task. It does not assess infringement, does not contact anyone, and does not decide whether a use is a problem. A lawyer does that.
- Connections
- web search · Instagram · Google Drive
- Captures
- URL, context, date observed
- Assesses infringement
- Never
The problem with brand monitoring is that you find out too late to have options
By the time someone in the company notices another business using a name close to yours, they have usually been trading under it for a year, have customers, and have a story about how they got there first. The options available at month two are very different from the options at month fourteen.
Nobody runs the searches, because running them is dull and finding nothing is the normal result. That is a good description of a job to assign to a machine that keeps a log.
The value is entirely in the evidence file: what was found, where, and on what date, captured at the time rather than reconstructed later from memory.
What a sweep covers and what it deliberately does not
Covered: the open web
Web search across the terms and variants you nominate, including common misspellings and the phrase forms you actually use in market.
Covered: Instagram
Account names and public posts using the mark, which is where a consumer brand issue usually shows up first.
Covered: your own historical use
Evidence of your own public use over time, which is worth capturing while it is easy.
Not covered: trademark registers
Official register searching is a specialist task that belongs with a trademark attorney or an agent. Polaris does not search registers and does not pretend the web is a substitute.
Not covered: any contact with the other party
The worker never sends a message. A letter about a mark is a legal act with consequences, and it comes from a lawyer.
What each captured item records
| Element | Purpose |
|---|---|
| The URL and account handle | So it can be re-checked and, if needed, produced later |
| The surrounding text, quoted | Context is what distinguishes a passing mention from a commercial use |
| The date observed | The single most important field, and the one memory gets wrong |
| What the worker searched to find it | So a sweep can be reproduced or widened |
| A note that nothing was assessed | The item is a finding, not an allegation |
Why it is affordable to run this monthly
A sweep that finds nothing is cheap, and finding nothing is the outcome you want.
$0
Cost of the workspace holding the evidence
Unlimited docs and files
~$2
Per human-equivalent hour delivered
A quiet monthly sweep is a short job
0
Messages sent to a third party
The worker contacts nobody
Questions people ask
+Can it search trademark registers?
No. Register searching is not in the connection catalog and it is genuinely specialist work. This is public-web and Instagram monitoring, which is complementary to a proper watch service, not a replacement for one.
+What should we do when it finds something?
Read the evidence, and if the use looks commercially relevant, put it in front of a trademark lawyer with the dated file attached. The point of capturing evidence on the day is that the lawyer's options are wider when the record is contemporaneous.
+Will it produce a lot of false positives?
At first, yes, particularly if your brand name is an ordinary word. Tighten the search terms in the SKILL.md over the first two or three runs, and keep the excluded terms visible in the file so future readers know what was deliberately filtered out.
+Where is the evidence stored?
As files attached to the delivery comment on the task, and in Google Drive if you connect it. Docs and files in Polaris are versioned, so the record of what was found and when is itself auditable.
Related
Legal operations work an AI worker can carry
Tracking, chasing, assembling and watching. Everything a legal team spends time on that is not actually practicing law.
Knowing that a source changed, on the week it changed
A worker watches the public pages you nominate, quotes what changed, and dates it. What the change means for you is a question for your adviser.
Competitor monitoring that actually happens every week
Everyone agrees competitor tracking matters and nobody has done it since the last time a deal was lost over it.
Compliance checklists with evidence attached and gaps named
A checklist where every line is ticked and nothing is evidenced is not a control. It is a document that will fail an audit slowly.
Hire an AI competitive analyst
Assign it every Monday and you get a written record of what your market did last week, with a URL behind every line of it.
Web search in Polaris
Nothing to authorize, nothing to store, and every query a worker runs appears in the activity feed while it works.
Connect Instagram to Polaris
Engagement data is the only honest input to a content calendar, and it is the input most calendars are written without.
How long an agent session can run, and what happens when it ends
Every agent runtime has bounds. The useful thing a vendor can do is tell you what they are.