- Certainty
You need to be certain that you are not infringing an existing trademark before you sink budget time and energy into marketing and promoting your brand. Changing the name/logo of your business in the future can be difficult, time-consuming and in some cases, you may even find yourself in receipt of the legal letter. Operating, without the correct protections in place leaves the door open for a competitor to register your name and /or logo as its trademark, potentially making things difficult for you in the future.
2. It creates value and confidence
Registering a trademark, essentially makes your company’s brand more valuable. Why? Because its proof that the company is the legal owner of what it is claiming to be. Investors certainly do not like to put their money into a company that has not taken the steps to protect its brand. In fact, it is a stock question in most due diligence questionnaires – “please provide details of all Trademarks”. You do not want to answer that question with “None registered”. It devalues your brand and ultimately makes investors nervous.
3. Protection
Registering a trademark is like building a moat around your brand. It sends out a signal to would-be infringers not to copy your name/logo or to use a domain name that slightly deviates from your company’s domain name in an effort to divert traffic from your website to theirs.
Where a competitor does infringe your registered trademark, it can be a relatively easy procedure to deal with from a legal perspective. Compare this to a scenario where you have not registered your trademark. Where you have not registered your trademark and you wish to challenge a competitor’s use of your name, logo, or even domain name you may be faced with a lengthy court case to prove that your common law rights have been infringed by virtue of the tort of “passing off”.
If you would like to learn more about the registering a trademark both in the countries your business operates in or intends to operate in and the “class” of goods or services your company will be offering, please contact dcunningham@cunninghamsolicitors.ie
The content of this article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice.