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Brand Protection – Top Tips

Thursday, 05 May 2011 Written by Martin Smith

Category Strategy

Launch

When launching a new product/setting up your business it is vital to check as far as reasonably possibly you are not going to find yourself hit by an injunction to stop using a name or a style and/or a claim for damages for passing off, which would undoubtedly be very expensive if not ruinous. We advise instructing lawyers check for similar names in:

Companies House
Intellectual Property Registry
Internet/Nominet
Local/International telephone directories
It is also best to choose unusual/unique name and one which is not descriptive of product as you are less likely to come across similar names or have a trade mark registration application rejected.

Ongoing

If you are not to allow others to obtain the benefit from your reputation and goodwill then you must protect your brand going forward. We suggest:

Monitor use/registration of similar names at Companies House. The procedure for challenging a name which is confusing with your own at Companies House is now simplified and relatively cheap so use it.
Register your name/design as a trademark if possible and use logo ™ and ®. It is then a prima facie breach (with no need for evidence of loss) if there is an unauthorised use of it.

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Comments

0 #1 Mike and Beatriz Hunter 2011-05-06 10:28

Hi Martin, interesting article. Re descriptive names, I agree that its best from a brand protection point of view to avoid a descriptive name, but the dilemma is that a descriptive name can be great from a marketing and SEO point of view, hence our use of better languages. Memorable and easy to find online. Try putting better languages in Google. Cheers Mike @fish3em

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