Why Register A Trademark

If you have a new product or are simply looking for the right brand name for your business, you face both a creative challenge and a legal issue.

The purpose of trademark registration must be to distinguish your own products and services from those of your market competitors, so that the public facing the trademark on the market must spontaneously associate it with the manufacturer or provider of the products / services marketed or provided under that. mark.

Therefore, the success of your products and services on the market is closely linked to the message that your brand conveys and the ease with which the brand remains in the public memory.

Your products or services need to convey different brand messages to the consumer audience, to ensure that when they see the brand on the market, they will spontaneously associate it with your company.

Branding strategy

First of all, you need to know very well the customers to whom both the offer and the message behind your brand will be reported, and the category of products and services marketed and provided under the brand will indicate both the target audience and especially the degree of it.

It is assumed that products in the category of those with low prices, wide circulation, require little attention from the public, because it will not give much time in choosing a product. Instead, in choosing an expensive product with low market circulation, e.g. luxury products, the consumer will pay a much higher degree of attention.

In principle, in order to be registered, a trademark cannot describe the category of products or services that will be protected, but, nevertheless, the trademark should convey a certain emotional content to the public, in order to be easily retained.

It is very important to check for possible negative meanings in other languages, in order to avoid embarrassing ambiguities.

It is important that the brand is not purely descriptive of the nature or geographical origin of the new product.

Steps to create a brand

To create a brand, start by writing syllables, word components, and other ideas so that a list can be developed. Try combinations of them.

Create a list of 20 to 30 ideas, making sure they are not descriptive of the products and services you intend to market or provide. The already generic example is the one about the APPLE brand. It could not protect vegetables and fruit or their marketing services because it was considered descriptive, instead it could successfully protect electronic products and their accessories.

In the second step, you need to check if the sign you have chosen to be registered as a trademark is identical or similar to a trademark that has already been applied for or registered for identical or similar products or services. Anything that matches certain letters, sounds similar or means the same thing conceptually, with a previously registered trademark, can be considered to be similar and rejected from registration.

If you find yourself in this situation, the registration of the trademark will have a low chance of success, and the use of the new trademark would be a violation of the previous trademark due to the risk of confusion and association among the public, and the owner of the earlier trademark your services on the market, respectively, can claim compensation equivalent to the damages suffered. In addition, you will lose your investment in marketing, packaging production and advertising.

You should first start with a search for identical earlier brands in the official databases.

TM-View is a free search portal provided by the European Trademark Office (EUIPO).

You must remove from your list those for which you already find identical, registered trademarks. Such older brands have a latent risk, which you should eliminate at an early stage in the trademark search process.

After searching on the principle of identity, those ideas that cannot be implemented due to previously registered trademarks must be eliminated.

In the last step, your brand ideas will be compared to similar, previously registered trademarks. Similar marks are those marks which, visually, phonetically or conceptually, produce a similar overall impression in the mind of the average consumer, which is likely to give rise to a likelihood of confusion including the risk of association.

You need to protect your brand so that no competitor can use it without your approval.

A trademark can be registered at national (OSIM), European (EUIPO) level or in certain countries where you have economic interests (WIPO). If a trademark needs to be protected in more than one country, the registration procedure can be complex to decide which route offers the best options.

Therefore, it is advisable to develop the strategy for creating and registering trademarks with the help of an industrial property agency. This will guarantee both lower overall costs, but also faster procedures, aspects worth considering.