Your startup business is slowly coming together and your making sure everything is in place. You’ve chosen a name for your service or product and wonder about trademarking the name to protect it.
At what stage should you start the trademarking process ?
This is a popular question I get asked a lot. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer.
Here’s 3 Important Points To Consider:
1/ Protecting your name is crucial.
Your name is your brand. If it’s a great name, you will want to protect it.
Would ‘Soundcloud’ be as good if it was called ‘noise from the sky’?
Probably not.
The name of your brand is your identity. It’s what your customers use to identify and relate to you, so it’s crucial to protect it.
2/ You may be infringing on someone else’s trademark
Without actually going through the whole trademark process, you don’t know 100% if that name is available for use.
It could well be trademarked already and you don’t know about it.
Often, even a search of the TM registry doesn’t bring up all the cases whereby you would gain opposition to the use of that name.
Just because you can register a business name with ASIC doesnt give you the right to use that name in the marketplace.
3/ If it is trademarked you can’t change it.
A few companies I know have trademarked their names only to be told by investors to change it as they don’t like it.
If, at that stage, you have the flexibility to change your name and adapt to investor interests, you are at an advantage and haven’t wasted precious time and $$ trademarking a name that won’t be used.
But, if you are certain about the name – perhaps you have secured investment – then don’t waste a second.
Conclusion
It’s complex.
It depends on the name you have chosen.
Trademark availability should be considered at the start when you’re first naming your business/product.
BEWARE:
One start up came to me for trademarks just after they had launched 3 products into the marketplace.
They had spent thousands $$ (over $50K) on branding, packaging and promotion.
Sadly, they were denied all three trademarks and were all opposed.
The client had to remove all products from the public view and re-name, re-brand and re-package everything – doubling their significant launch costs and costing them a huge waste of time and resources.
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I work with lots of companies throughout the trademark process – if you have any questions get in touch. Click Here
Disclaimer
This information is a general guide to further your knowledge about patenting and does not constitute legal advice.
