The most valuable aspect of legal protection of your intellectual property is that it turns intangible assets into exclusive property rights. It enables you to claim ownership over your company’s intangible assets and exploit them to their maximum potential. In short, IP protection makes intangible assets a bit more tangible by turning them into valuable exclusive assets.
A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, logotype and/or combination of these that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods and services of one party from those of another. Trademarks are key to giving your business a distinctive character, allowing it to distinguish from the rest. Trademarks enable consumers to make quick, confident and safe purchasing decisions. A trademark is what helps to recognize your products and services in the competitive market. They have an ability to capture the essence of your brands and the energy, investment and know-how that goes into them. There are various roles a trademark can play in a company, and all of them are crucial to the success of your business.
A trademark for a company is as important as a marketing strategy, which ultimately helps succeeding in long term plans.
Today’s competitive marketplace, the name of a product, a symbol or a logotype can often be used by third parties illegally, cause damage to business that runs under the name of a certain trademark. Trademark registration provides exclusive rights to the use of the registered trademark: it can be used only by its owner or licensed to another party in return of payment. Securing a registered trademark protects your brand and provides you with both legal and soft tools to prevent someone from using similar signs and riding off the back of your business.
Unregistered trademark may enjoy copyright protection and can be protected in jurisdictions affording protection based on trademark’s use in commerce, otherwise it only gives the opportunity to third parties to register it before you and prevent you from continuing to use it. Even for those countries where unregistered trademarks are protected you are well advised to register it in order to obtain the best protection.
Registration is highly advisable to avoid the risk that another company registers same or similar trademark, which would most likely mean, that you have to change your company’s name or logo. Also, registration gives value to your business by adding clarity in any merger or franchising of the business, positively impacting its perceived value.
