Are all aspects of your brand protected? These will most commonly be your name, logos, the names of your products and services and slogans.
Brand protection. It’s an area often overlooked until an issue arises. However, like most areas of life – in the long run – taking a proactive approach to brand protection is cheaper than cure; it ensures that you can stop others using a brand which diverts your potential customers to them (believing that they are buying goods/services from you) and ensures that no one can register your name (for example) and ‘block’ you from using/registering it.
For those who have obtained protection, often the registration certificates will be filed to gather dust and the subject will be forgotten. However, the passage of time and the evolution of a business can create gaps in the scope of protection.
As spring draws to a close, for those clients who haven’t dusted off their certificates recently, we are providing a complementary brand protection assessment to identify areas where they may wish to shore up their protection. Questions that will be considered include:
- Are all aspects of your brand protected? These will most commonly be your name, logos, the names of your products and services and slogans.
- Does the list of the goods/services (the ‘specification’) cover everything that you sell and (if you will be expanding your offering) that you intend to sell in the future?
- Are you protected in all of the jurisdictions where you sell? For example, protection in mainland China will not provide protection in Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan. Similarly, protection in the UK will not provide protection in Gibraltar, Guernsey or Jersey.
- Do you have appropriate trade mark watching service to ensure that you are notified of ‘conflicting’ trade mark applications filed by others?
- Are the relevant registers up-to-date? For example, where a trade mark is licensed in China – in the event of ‘attack’ – the trade mark will be revoked unless the licence has been recorded with the Chinese trade mark registry.
If you wish to arrange a brand assessment or have any questions about your brand protection, please call us on 0203 740 2360 or email Mark Corran at [email protected]
