Thursday May 30, 2013 at 1:35pm
Ever since Bass beer secured its classic red triangle logo in 1876 as the first ever registered trade mark, businesses have appreciated the vital importance and value of protecting their brands. Unlike a patent, which expires after a maximum of 20 years, a trade mark registration can be renewed in perpetuity – and grow in value accordingly. But what are the pitfalls? It isn’t enough simply to come up with a name that is memorable (think Kodak), appealing (Ben & Jerry’s), ic....
Monday May 13, 2013 at 5:20pm
Mighty film studio, Disney, has given in to pressure to drop its attempt to take exclusive legal ownership of the phrase “Day of the Dead”. That, feared an angry army of online protesters, would have been the effect of securing a registered trade mark based on the name of the famous traditional Mexican festival.The studio wanted to monopolise the name in advance of its upcoming animated film, in production under its Pixar title, and directed by Toy Story 3’s Lee Unkrich. Disney....
Tuesday July 5, 2011 at 12:36pm
A quick Trademark Registration 'Boot-Camp' that aims to explain the legal and commercial benefits of trademark registration and what every business should know about how to protect the legal rights in their business name....1. Exclusivity: The One and Only… Trademark registration will confirm your legal ownership of the name or brand and enable you to stop others using your name for the same, or similar, goods or services. A successful trademark application will mean that you q....
Thursday June 23, 2011 at 5:37pm
Since bursting onto the political scene three years ago, Sarah Palin has had her share of beltway bustups. Add to these a recent sideshow at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (based in Alexandria, Virginia – within the confines of the metonymic Washington Beltway). Palin, along with her daughter Bristol, is attempting to protect her name as a registered trademark. The applications caught the attention of politicos, pundits and trademark lawyers when it came to light t....
Monday June 20, 2011 at 12:47pm
New-style ICANN Domains:The Net Widens, Don't Be Caught! ICANN, the body that controls the assignment of domain names and web addresses has announced this week that from now on, URLs will not be restricted to the standard suffixes such as .com, .org and .co.uk. Apparently, anything will be possible when the new scheme rolls out - for example we can expect to see www.transportfor.london and www.google.search quite soon. Any word could replace the "dot com". Accountants, for instance, co....
Wednesday June 1, 2011 at 6:21pm
Message: Beware of 'instant' free trademark search results online. Some trademark websites offer an immediate online search result, In our experience, these online automated trademark search sites are sometimes unreliable. The 'instant' trademark search results that they report can lead to snap decisions based on incomplete information. We had an enquiry today (1st June 2011) from a restaurant owner who had just done a search using one of the online trademark search sit....
Thursday May 19, 2011 at 11:12am
Cyber-squatting, or domain name hijacking, is the practice of registering other people’s company names in an attempt to sell them on to businesses at a vastly inflated price. When a cyber-squatter parks themselves on your company name, you may find yourself faced with an asking price of several £000’s.Typical methods of hijacking business names include putting in punctuation (such as dots and dashes), abbreviating words (‘limited’ becomes ‘ltd’) or even ....
Tuesday May 3, 2011 at 6:24pm
Since this is the first blog post on this new generation trademark advice site, it is fitting that we start with the first ever trademark registered. Ever since BASS secured its classic red triangle logo, in 1876, as the first ever trademark registration, businesses have appreciated the vital importance of protecting their trademark, name and brand value by registration. Unlike a patent, which expires after a maximum of 20 years, a trademark registration can be renewed in perpetuity ....