trademark solicitor leicester, trade mark registration, trademark lawyer Leicester

Trademarking your logo – the basics – some things to consider

If you’ve invested time and money in to developing a brand, then your business will usually want to ensure that no one else can copy the branding.

You can protect the business by seeking Trade Mark Registration in the UK.

Trade Marks in the UK are registered with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) but in order to become registered, the logo (or word/slogan etc) needs to meet certain requirements set down by the Trade Mark Act 1994.

What is a trade mark?
You’ll often see the words “trade mark” (or trademark) and “brand” used interchangeably; brand and branding is used by cooler marketing types whereas trade mark is used by lawyers like me!

Both refer to the device used by a business to differentiate their goods from other companies. Sometimes we call them “signs” – and they can be either a logo, stylised words, or just the words themselves.

The word “brand” literally comes from the time when herdsmen would brand or mark his animals to distinguish them from he neighbours – now we brand products to show this originates from company x.

Successful brands are often simple – an Apple for instance – but a brand may also a name, a label, a slogan, a jingle or simply the distinctive packaging or “get-up” of a product. Brands often communicate information about the product or service. A brand provides the consumer not only with reassurance about the origin of the product but also about other features such as quality, luxury or economy.

What type of trade marks are possible?
A mark may consist of:

Words (for example, KODAK for cameras or JAGUAR for cars).
Slogans (for example, JUST DO IT for Nike sportswear).
Designs (for example, a harp for Guinness stout).
Letters (for example, RBS in respect of banking services).
Numerals (for example, 501 jeans).
Internet domain names (for example, amazon.com).
The shape of goods or their packaging (for example, the shape of a Coca Cola bottle, registration of which was denied by the House of Lords under the 1938 Act, or the triangular shape of Toblerone chocolate).
Smells (for example, Sumitomo Rubber Industries’ registration of a floral fragrance reminiscent of roses as applied to tyres).
Sounds (for example, the Intel four-note musical jingle).
Colours (for example, Heinz’s registration of the colour turquoise for use on tins of baked beans).
Gestures (for example, Asda has registered a double-tap on a jeans or skirt back pocket as a trade mark).
Moving digital images (for example, the Intel “leap ahead” animated logo).
Any sign which can be represented graphically is potentially registerable as a trade mark.

Why register a trade mark?
Registration of trade marks allows the brand owner to protect itself against competition.

Without registration, one must rely upon common law of passing off, which are more difficult, more expensive and time-consuming to run.

Upon registration, the owner gets a statutory right to the exclusive use of the trademark in connection with the goods or services it is registered in (called classes).

Registration of a trademark gives the owner the right to sue for trade mark infringement if any person uses:

an identical sign for identical goods
an identical sign for similar goods
a similar sign for identical goods
and in some cases, a similar sign for similar goods.
So can we just register anything as a trademark? Our logo is just a simple image with standard font text on?
In order to be registerable as a trade mark, the mark must be:

distinctive – that is capable of distinguishing itself from other brands
able to be graphically represented,
can be a 3d shape as long as it is not the function of the object or a container
cannot be merely descriptive
cannot be deceptive (e.g calling something Gold if it is made of aluminum)
cannot be a common surname or geographical name
cannot be a national flag
must not be similar to an earlier registered trademark
There is a risk, then, that if you seek to register a very simple logo with a icon and name, that it might not be registerable as it would not be distinctive or novel.



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