Trademarks provide essential legal protection from rivals attempting to steal your customers, and therefore it’s vital you take the time to protect your business name. Registered trademarks can be sold, traded and even used as security on loans and mortgages. Once your name is trademarked, you can license it to other businesses and use it for franchise opportunities, for example.
To go ahead and register your trademark to protect your brand’s name and/or logo, here’s what you do. For Trademarks, Designs and Patents, you need to register your intellectual property with the Intellectual Property Office to gain a registration certificate.
The basic premise for trademarks is that you need to be able to demonstrate that you created your design before a person that copied it did.
Intellectual Property in the UK usually includes:
- Copyright – things written, sounds, music, photos etc
- Trademarks – the names and logos of brands or products
- Design Rights – the design or look of your products
- Patents – inventions and how things work
When you register your trademark, you’ll be able to:
- take legal action against anyone who uses your brand without your permission, including counterfeiters
- put the ® symbol next to your brand – to show that it’s yours and warn others against using it
- sell and license your brand
Having your intellectual property registered helps protect you and your business to stop others from using it. As this is a legal agreement, it can be beneficial to seek advice from a specialised lawyer to guide you through the application process – especially if you are registering a community trademark.
Firstly, check if your trademark already exists by browsing the UKIPO database. This is a free search, although it is fairly limited. As your specialist trademark lawyer, I am able to conduct a more detailed search of registered trademarks.
It’s important that you pick the relevant class for your business when you trademark a name. A trademark is registered to a specific class, meaning different businesses can register the same trademark in different classes. I will guide you through these steps to ensure your class is correct for your name you wish to trademark.
How long does it take to register a trademark in the UK?
The registration process takes about 4 months if no-one opposes it. Registered trademarks last for 10 years. You can renew a trademark in the 6 months before it expires and up to 6 months afterwards. You will receive an initial report on your application within two to four weeks. Thereafter, the trademark application is ‘published’ by the IPO – during this 2-month period anyone can oppose the registration. Most objections from the UKIPO revolve around how distinctive a trademark is. The more distinct it is – such as a unique name and logo – the easier it will be to register.
How much does it cost to register a trademark in the UK?
Your Business Lawyer offer a low-cost fixed-fee trademark registration service – £500 plus VAT for our fees. There’s an additional £170 Registration Fee paid to the IPO. This is for one trademark in one class.
Where do I register a trademark in the UK?
We can help you with trademark registration and design right registration. We have direct access to IPO Trademark Information and Steven Mather is genuinely one of few solicitors in Leicester, probably even the East Midlands, who can say they are a genuine expert trademark solicitor.
Get in touch today, and I’ll help you get your trademark registration completed quickly and easily for a low fixed fee.