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Written by : Domenic Derhammer |
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hi everybody welcome back it's me again Eugene from Canadian business and Enterprise Services and today we would like to discuss another topic of great interest and some confusion to our clients and that is the business name protection available in Canada in general to protect your business you have to make a proper registration and ensure that your competitors or other people do not use the name which is exactly like yours were too similar to confuse people to believe they're dealing with you when they deal with someone else in general there different levels of name protection some of them gives you certain protection others don't that's what we'll discuss today I'll show you what to do and how to do it right and at the end of this video I also provide you a very small advice that hopefully will save you a lot of money in the future and will give you an opportunity to start your business in the most efficient straightforward way without paying unnecessary fees so first level of protection that we've discussed already is master business license technically no protection whatsoever the only thing that it gives you is the registration of your name with the provincial registrated body and allowing you to operate on the different names and you're initially registered corporate name or your personal name it does not prevent anyone else from registering the same name for their businesses their services their products their shop stores it will not give you any certain tools to stop others from doing that second level of registration and minimal protection is the provincial corporation named registration where you register your name as a part of incorporation at that stage no one else in the province of Ontario will be able to register the name with the same company with the same name or confusingly similar name but that will not prevent your competitors from using your name once it becomes a famous and known to call their products their services their stores in many situations you won't be able directly to stop them from doing that third level is the federal corporation with the name registration which provides you similar to province but across Canada protection which means no-one across Canada be able to register company with the same or confusing the similar name but again that will not stop other people from doing business operating calling their product stores under the same name and in order to protect your assets you will have to really go to the courts fight proof spend a lot of money to stop it the on the actual way and the only efficient way to protect your name is a trademark registration and trademark provides you with proper registration and protection of your business product or service name and prevents others from using the same a confusingly similar name with regards to similar products or services as yours technically your your competitors will not be able to steal your name and use it for their own benefit trademark is more expensive more complicated more demanding procedure which I advise everyone to use a proper consultant or advisor who will do it for you either lawyer or trademark registration agent but once you see that your business starts growing starts creating creating certain awareness and knowledge of people on the market you have to think consider and start to register a trademark to protect your name one additional comment is that trademark registration limited to any one country where it's registered which which means that if you plan to develop and grow your business internationally you have to plan and register your trade trademark trade name in all those countries where you want to start operating now to the little advice that I promised at the beginning of this video and that is when you approach registration name registration of a company from any angle either incorporation under name trademark application or master business license before you do that very important run and by any possible the main names under the same name that want to register there are lots of people in Canada and around the globe that have engines searches that will identify corporate name registration register that the name the main name under the same name and then will try to sell it to you for 10 20 50 thousand times more expensive than just to buy the main directly from the domain registration agencies so before you run to register your company and a certain name by yourself at the main website name www your name dot c-- a.com dotnet because otherwise you will have to deal with resellers with explicitly higher prices to do to technically have your name on the internet so thank you for watching leave your comments in the section below ask your questions as I already advised personal to the email general in the comments below if you like like us and I hope to see you soon with future topics will discuss about Canadian business thank you for watching
Thanks for your comment Evelyne Muchmore, have a nice day.
- Domenic Derhammer, Staff Member
let's talk about protect 101 one of the five seminars in our smart small business series we call it protect 101 and specifically build it then protect it and what we mean by that is quite literally you're building your business you need to protect it let me just give you some general understanding of what we call intellectual property and how the world works out there and then we'll get specific about your business intellectual property is the sum of an organization's ideas inventions technologies brands general knowledge software processes all of these things that can be converted into profit and those words that you just heard are basically how CRA defines intellectual property believe it or not there are intellectual property consultants lawyers and other advisers all focused just on intellectual property it's often the heart of the value of these large businesses what they have created well we think it's the same thing for small businesses you certainly don't have to spend the same time and money at it but it is important that you protect what is most critical to your business the bottom line is you're doing these things to build your business or you will be and protecting certain things is very important let's get specific let's start with your business name probably the first thing that you came up with and even if you have registered that name which we certainly encourage you to do and regardless of the kind of structure you've chosen a sole proprietorship or partnership a corporation that name is not protected let me give you another definition straight from the office of until actual property the granting of names under the Business Corporations Act does not protect you from earlier or subsequent trademarks of other parties so what they're really saying is when you register a business name someone else may already be in the process of trademarking it in fact it may already be trademarked and yet you can still register your business similarly when you're registering your business name we would absolutely suggest you do a search to make sure that it's not in trade mart what else is important to protect well trademarks are identifiable things like a logo your business name a tagline the names of your products and services these are all things that will be on brochures on the web it'll be everywhere for you and unfortunately just like the business name example I gave you unless you trademark these things they won't be yours from a legal perspective someone else can trade mark them and have you legally stop using them in the seminar protect 101 we go well beyond trademarks we talk about copyrights which refer more two bodies of work it often is referred to when we think of recordings or literary works books but it also applies to manuals it can apply to your website so in the seminar what we'll do is will not only help you understand what is important to protect and what it costs to protect but will also help you to choose those names or to do searches and investigate and understand which names might be most effective so it's a body of knowledge that we're going to share with you we have not protected it we want to make it available to you and we think it's an important part of starting and growing a small business see you there you
Thanks telovnikC your participation is very much appreciated
- Domenic Derhammer
About the author
I've studied time geography at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and I am an expert in natural language processing (computational linguistics). I usually feel touched. My previous job was traffic administrator (freight & passenger) I held this position for 15 years, I love talking about topiary and face slapping. Huge fan of Merritt Wever I practice rafting and collect for sports cards.
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