If you are an owner of a small business, then your trademark would be a crucial intangible asset of your business that has the potential to add value to your business. Trademark is used to differentiate your goods and services from the others such as it could be;
- – Name.
- – Images.
- – Slogans.
- – Taglines.
Eventually, they would increase your business’s brand identity and recognizability so that customers can quickly locate your products. As someone having online trademark registration done, you will have the prerogative to utilize marks in your industry. Hence, it is vital to understand how to make most of it. Here are some of the crucial tips that would help small businesses while registering for their trademark.
– Conduct your research diligently.
When designing your trademark, you should carry out a market analysis on your own before applying. This makes sure that you create a sui generis and peculiar brand. If your trademark is novel within your industry, you can be assured that you are not infringing third-party trademark rights. You must use IP Australia’s trademark search tool to take a glance for similar and identical trademark within your industry.
However, if you do not carry out an analysis before applying for a trademark, your trademark might be too similar or identical or resembles one that already exists. Later, your application may be turned down by IP Australia, or other businesses might take legal action against your trademark.
As IP Australia necessitates you to opt for the goods or services that are proper to your trademark, you must also ponder what your business will offer. Then, look into IP Australia’s categorization search to check out under which classes you must register your trademark.
– Be peculiar, not expressive.
IP Australia needs your trademark to be peculiar and distinctive from other brands’ trademark. Here, it means that your trademark cannot solely delineate its goods and services.
For instance, it is improbable that you would be able to register “top-notch beauty treatment” as a trademark as it is not sui generis and only delineates your services. Possessing a sui generis brand name that is distinct from others gives value to your business. It is also crucial for business expansion.
Telstra’s case demonstrated the importance of distinctive marks. Telstra tried to register the word ‘Yellow’ for its directories, the Yellow pages, in 2003. But they did not get one because the word did not differentiate from its guides as Telstra. Yellow had already become generic color used to denote a business directory. Consequently, IP Australia has taken it to be expressive.
– Registering your trademark without any delay.
Suppose you possess a brand logo or a name that is sui generis. In that case, getting your trademark registration done as soon as possible ensures its protection as the timeline for trademark registration is predetermined.
Although the registration process might take several months, once your mark has been registered, you will be granted protection from your application’s data. Hence, it is requisite that you apply for it without any delay. This would restrict the risk of rivals from obtaining your mark’s rights by submitting before you do. Nonetheless, it would help if you used your trademark persistently and hired a trademark monitoring service to help you with the rest. This would ensure that rivals from the market cannot have your registration removed by saying it is out of order.
– Preserve, oversee, and impose your right.
The value of it is depended on how you utilize it. As the holder of the mark, you should do the following;
– Utilise the mark which is connected with all of your goods and services to keep away your competitors from removing your trademarks.
– Observe the market for considerably indistinguishable marks and be vigilant to take legal actions against the potential infringers.
In one case, the owner of the business named Christian had ceased trading after Nestle successfully filed a lawsuit against him for contravention of the trademark. He had started selling vitamin products online, which is known as ‘A- Sashi’. Nonetheless, A- Sashi’s name was too ambiguous and identical to Nestle’s trademarked name of ‘Musashi,’’ which they were using for their dietary supplements.
Way forward.
Trademark registration is the best way to make your business identity and ensure that it has protected your business’s expansion. Nonetheless, you should ensure that you have analyzed the market for the existing brand names so that your trademark remains the same and unique.
Additionally, you should register your trademark as quickly as possible to have the upper hand against your competitors. Once you get it done, use it persistently and oversee the market to catch the potential infringers.
