Extending Your Trademark Registration

Extending Your Registered Trademark Rights

A lot of SME's, and even some larger businesses, only register their trademark in their main market.

This is usually a UK trademark registration or an EU trademark registration.

This can be a serious mistake, especially is the trademark is used more widely or is, in the reasonably near future, expected to be used more widely.

For any business that has a digital presence, whether product or service-led, the likelihood is that its trademark is attracting attention, and possibly even sales, from other world jurisdictions. An example would be a game or other app that is downloaded to mobiles and tablets all over the world.

The question for brand owners is: "How would I feel if my trademark was registered by someone else in another country?"

Our trademark watching services and trademark agents all over the world are constantly finding that trade mark applications are being made in other world jurisdictions for trademarks that have already been protected in the UK and EU.

It is relatively inexpensive to protect your trade marks quite widely using the Madrid Protocol procedures. In some overseas countries, trademark protection is available for less than £100.

Certainly, if your business has an actual business presence(or is planning to have a presence in the next few years)in another country, or if you are making sales or appointing a distributor, agent or manufacturer, in any other country(or planning to do so) you should certainly call us for some further trade mark advice. Even quite small home-based businesses and startups have now woken up to the importance of an international trademark registration programme.

So the message is that all businesses should periodically ask themselves whether their registered trademark rights should be extended into other countries....and act sooner rather than later to protect the brand as widely as possible.

TIP: Also, keep your eye on the trade mark priority periods that enable you to extend your brand usually within 6 months of an initial UK or EU trade mark application whilst keeping the priority date of the earlier application.