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Written by : Collin Hyndman |
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hi everyone thanks for joining us today for legal visions trademarks 101 webinar my name is rebecca jones and i'm a registered trademark attorney and practice leader in the trademark team at legalvision my name is gracie chen and i'm a lawyer in legal visions ipt specializing in trademarks so our team works closely with a range of clients from startups to enterprises and assist with many aspects of ip and trademark protection including brand protection advice drafting and filing trademark applications in australia internationally responding to trademark objections and enforcing trademark rights in australia today we're going to take you through some trademark fundamentals we'll discuss the life cycle of a trademark some common pitfalls we'll also discuss some practical steps that you can take to protect sorry to protect and enforce your trademark rights we should have time for some questions at the end so please feel free to send these through as we go all right so we'll jump right in um and we'll start with looking at what actually is a trademark so a trademark of any sign that you use to distinguish your goods and services from those of other people and can be a word business name logo slogan color sound and even a smell the most common trademarks that a business will initially protect are the business name and logo and as your business grows however you might find that there are other aspects of your branding that form a large part um of your business and identity it should also be protected so an example of this is mcdonald's so they have the name mcdonald's registered as a trademark um the golden arches symbol and the slogan i'm loving it these are all separate trademarks that mcdonald's uses to represent their company and rent yeah mcdonald's is a great example to demonstrate the different trademarks that a single company can own and have a reputation in so another example of this is nike so this company owns separate trademarks for its business name nike it's tick or swish logo and the slogan just do it as gracie mentioned all sorts of signs can be registered as trademarks some examples of the more unique or non-traditional trademark registrations are cadbury's colored trademark for the colored people in relation to chocolate products and nokia's sound trademark for the well-known nokia ringtone as gracie noted the most common trademarks are a business or product name a logo or a slogan the other more non-traditional trademarks are relatively uncommon particularly set or smell trademarks in fact there are only two of these types of trademarks on the register in australia one being for the smell of eucalyptus applied to golf teas and the other being for the smell of cinnamon applied to furniture products so you might have seen the tm or r symbol used next to a trademark so the tm symbol is used when you want to claim rights in a trademark and can actually be used anytime before registration so if you're yet to apply to register your trademark or it's pending with irp australia you can use the symbol to show the public that you consider the mark as a trademark once citroen mark is officially registered and you've received a registration certificate from if you australia you can use the r symbol so displaying the r symbol can be important for putting competitors on notice of your registered rights in a trademark yeah as gracie mentioned the arsenal can only be used on trademarks once they have been registered and some people don't realize that it's actually an offence under the trademarks act to use the r symbol on an unregistered trademark so it's definitely worthwhile to know the difference now a common area of confusion for businesses is the difference between business name registrations and a trademark say you're establishing your business you've incorporated your company you've registered your business name with ethic and you've secured the top level domains for your name people are often surprised to learn that taking all of these steps doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to use your trademark the business name registration helps you to comply with essex requirements but it does not give you any separate rights in the name as a trademark although your trademark and your business name registration will often match a business name registration and a trademark registration are two entirely different things it's not compulsory to register your trademark although it is certainly best practice to obtain trademark registration and there are a number of important benefits and protection flowing from registration which gracie will discuss in a moment i also just wanted to mention that aside from trademark registrations there are also unregistered trademark rights that can exist so trademark rights can begin accruing from the moment you first adopt and use the trademark in relation to your goods or services so if you if you have commenced use before registering your trademark you actually might have started accruing rights in the trademark as you built up your reputation in the name as mentioned it's still best practice to register your trademark yeah that's a really good point um and as a couple benefits of trademark registration a registered trademark maximizes your brand protection and affords you with a number of rights both legal and non-legal first and foremost having a registered trademark provides you with an exclusive legal right to use that trademark in connection with the goods and services it's registered for so as rebecca mentioned having a business name registration doesn't provide this right so this means that you would have the power to commence action against anyone who is using the same or a similar trademark to you in connection with similar goods and services competitors are less likely to copy or misuse the trademark that's registered and without trademark registration it might be more difficult to stop those parties from copying your friend trademark registration also creates a financial asset that you can license and sell to third parties so you should ensure that you have registered rights to a trademark first before giving someone else permission to use that trademark so this would be relevant if you franchise your business for example to ensure that you have maximum control over how your franchisees will use your trademarks and branding on a similar note you shouldn't be selling a trademark to someone else without having trademark registration in place this is particularly relevant should you ever want to sell your business and it's something that a purchaser will want to know before buying business trademark registration is also important for attracting investment for your business in fact most investors will want to know if you have trademark protection for your brand because it increases your brand's credibility and reduces the risks of disputes with competitors so this means that investors can invest in your business with a greater sense of security and finally registering your trademark will significantly increase your businesses professional image and reputation being able to promote your tradem
Thanks for your comment Bruno Bednarik, have a nice day.
- Collin Hyndman, Staff Member
does it cost thousands to register in Australia you're looking at about $1400 so one hundred and forty dollars a year basically averaged out over the ten years so is that too much money to pay it's $1400 too much to pay well a lot of business small business people think it is and they're prepared to put up with the risk but think of how much I mean I paid thousands of dollars for my website this is a one-off payment of for 10 years how many people know of anything that you pay once in 10 years does anybody know of anything else it's just incredible that you know you would hesitate to pay that small amount of money to have the peace of mind that you're actually own a brand and that is actually safe so we do the research part first and that's an additional cost but if I say to you pay me $1,000 and I'll tell you whether you can save 15,000 in a trademark dispute is it a good commercial decision to say no I'm not going to do that I'm going to take the risk because I do have that I do have people that say that and in two cases last year funnily enough in the same area they both decided that they paid me the money to do the research but I told them not to use it and within six months of one starting to use it and 18 months of another they both got a cease and desist letter now this comes back to the information that you're looking at I gave them the information that the brand was not a good brand to go ahead and they said well I will because once there was a company in Queensland and another one had a company that was a competitor in Adelaide and they said I don't think there's going to be a problem so I trademark registration is australia-wide so those owners in those states have got it doesn't matter where anybody is they can challenge the use and send them a cease and desist letter and that's exactly what they did and so those owners had put in 18 months and six months worth of time and effort into a brand and the money to set it up and both of them had to change so I think in business there are expenses that you just have to pay and it's an insurance and that's part of it because you're risking a lot
Thanks Corrin your participation is very much appreciated
- Collin Hyndman
About the author
I've studied developmental systems theory at Winthrop University in Rock Hill and I am an expert in physical education / pedagogy. I usually feel irritated. My previous job was radio & tv talk show host I held this position for 4 years, I love talking about railway journeys and breakdancing. Huge fan of Lil Uzi Vert I practice shooting and collect breweriana.
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