A registered trade mark:

• may put people off using your trade mark without your permission
• allows you to take legal action against anyone who uses your trade mark without your permission
• is your property, which means you can sell it, or let other people have a licence that allows them to use it

Your trademark is valuable and becomes more valuable over time the more you use it. Some trademarks go on to be worth millions. The value of your names and brands can only be "locked in" by actually protecting them by trademark registration. Domain name and company name registration not enough.The principal benefit of registering a trade mark is that it gives the owner the exclusive right to use your mark for the goods and/or for which it has been registered.

Legal exclusivity is only obtained by trade mark registration. If you do not protect you trade marks someone else will. Act now or you will lose the opportunity to capitalise on the power of your own name.

Your name may already belong to someone else without you knowing it. They may have registered it already and you may be building up goodwill in a name you do not even own. The value of your brand can be hijacked in this way if you have not protected it and someone else decides to register it first.

Trademark Registration

If you are using a name in business you can only properly to protect it by registering it as a trademark. This will give you the exclusive right to use the name and to stop others from using it for similar business. If they do you will be able to stop them by legal proceedings and they will be liable to pay you damages by way of compensation. Trademark registration is different from company name registration at Companies House or domain name registration. Neither of these secure the exclusive right to use the name.

Infringement

If you do not register a trademark it is easier for competitors to use a brand name or business logo similar to your own, meaning that they can reap the benefits of your hard work. However the problem is not only caused by those actively seeking to steal copyright. You also need to make sure that you do not use a brand name that has been registered as a trademark by someone else. If you do, you can be sued in court for damages and may be required to pay compensation.

Many new businesses or new products are launched onto the market without carrying out any trademark checks often with disastrous consequences. The last thing you want after you have spent your launch costs is to be faced with a court order to stop using the name, deliver up all of your infringing product and have to bear all the costs of a re-brand.

How to Register a Trademark

When you register a trade mark in the UK, the procedure is completed through the UK IPO (UK Intellectual Property Office), giving the registrant far wider protection and making any infringement much easier to deal with. The procedure of registering a trade mark will generally take approximately 6 months to complete.

Upon receipt of your instruction, we will conduct a Preliminary Search. Once we have concluded our search, we will email you our search report, which will highlight any potential problems with the registration of your mark in relation to similar or identical marks already registered under the same or similar Class of goods and the marks registrability; and will also include our recommendations on the classifications that your goods/services should be registered under.

If the Preliminary Search proves to be successful and you choose to submit a formal application to the UK IPO, the Registrar will issue the filing receipt within 10 days, the receipt will confirm the details entered onto the application.

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