The legal side of operating a business is often overlooked. For my clients and me, we turn to the experts for advice when it comes to trademarking our offerings. We turn to Akilah Phillip of Let’s Talk Intellectual Property. Read what she had to say about Trademark Registration, the Gateway to Brand Protection.
Protecting brands has become increasingly important as entrepreneurs, as well as small and medium enterprises continue to create businesses, develop new products, and services to bring to the marketplace.
Trademarks are brand identifiers used to identify goods, as well as services in commerce. The term trademark refers to the symbol, used by the brand owner to distinguish themselves as they engage in trade.
Traditionally trademarks were initially classified as logos, slogans, mascots, and brand colours. However, trademark law has evolved to cover new ways businesses have found to differentiate
themselves from their competitors.
Trademark categories such as sound, smell, and taste are areas that trademark law has expanded into to give recognition to unconventional marks. These changes in the law have occurred because businesses have found new ways to distinguish their goods, products, and services.
Trademark law has also adapted to the growth of the social media market which has seen certain jurisdictions granting trademark protection to hashtags.
Creating the right trademark for your business is essential to the business’s brand protection strategy. Trademarks must not be generic or descriptive. It is extremely important that these factors are present when creating the business’s brand identifiers.
It is a common mistake of many entrepreneurs and start-up companies that their brand name is an identical reflection of the limited liability company’s name or registered business name. Creating a brand name that has its unique characteristic generates the best brand representation for the business.
Companies with ownership of brands such as Apple, Monster, and Carib are examples of corporations that have developed unique brands and given them a secondary meaning to the original English meaning of the word.
Developing a well-known secondary meaning for the brand removes any generic, descriptive, or literal interpretation that can be attributed to the brand.
Businesses that have built brands that have garnered a recognizable secondary meaning among their customer base are the ideal types of trademarks businesses can produce that would be easily granted trademark registration.
Owning a trademark is specific to the areas of commercial activity used by the business to identify the brand to their customers. When a business decides to pursue trademark registration it should be done according to the products or services they offer.
Trademarks are classified according to the Nice Classification (NCL) system established by the Nice Agreement of 1957. This system is used universally to determine which category a brand should be registered in according to the type of commercial activity identified under the classification system.
It is important to note that trademarks are territorial, this means they are jurisdiction-specific. Trademarks are usually filed by business owners in the country where their business is located and is the main market for their commercial activity.
Trademark registration in countries where businesses export their products or services is always recommended as the business increases its visibility in a foreign market. While trademarks are legally binding in the country, they are registered in the Madrid System. It is a convenient and cost-effective solution for registering and managing trademarks worldwide.
There are approximately 124 countries that are signatories to the Madrid Protocol. Through the Madrid System, businesses can register their trademark in their home country and apply for trademark protection in other countries which are a part of the Madrid System.
As businesses expand globally, and with the explosion of the online marketplace, trademark registration has become increasingly necessary as the first step to worldwide brand protection for entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises, and corporations.
About the Author
Akilah Phillip is an Entertainment Attorney and Intellectual Property Specialist. She is the CEO and founder of Let’s Talk Intellectual Property Ltd (LTIP), a consultancy firm headquartered in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.
Akilah has facilitated and hosted various workshops for different facets of the entertainment and corporate sectors. She has represented broadcasters, musicians, designers, producers, and businesses in the intellectual property sphere.
You can find more about the author here:
https://letustalkip.com/home-main/
