Can your brand be trademarked? The simple test
Do you find you are great at looking after your physical assets like buildings and stock but neglect your soft assets like your intellectual property? Things like websites and social media accounts need to be protected. Did you realize it is relatively straightforward to register your brand name, your logo or what is called a device as a trademark? We give a lot of advice about registering trademarks. In this video, I share the simple test – Can your brand be trademarked?
If you want to know if the brands you are using can be trademarked, contact me here. We can have an answer within a week.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Ross Millen:
Hi. What I find is our clients are very diligent in looking after their various hard assets -properties, buildings and stock. But what they sometimes neglect are their soft assets, intellectual property. We're talking about things like websites, social media accounts, Facebook, Instagram, etc. And, they need to make sure they're protected. And often, our clients have brands or other names that they're using. And, did you realize that it's relatively straightforward to register a trademark in Australia, either for your name, your brand name or if you're using some sort of logo or what they might call a device? Now, the key thing here is that we've got access to a trademark attorney, so we give a lot of advice about registration of trademarks. The main distinction here and that's a good word to use, is whether the name or the device is distinctive or descriptive. I always like to think of cornflakes.
Corn flakes actually tell you what the product is. It's descriptive, so you can't register that as a trademark. But if you have a name like Kellogg's Corn Flakes, then Kellogg's can be a trademark. So, if you want to know whether the brands you're using are descriptive or distinctive, contact us. Then we can make a quick application to the Trademarks Office and have an answer for you within a week, as to the likelihood of registration of your name or your brand as a trademark. And, what's the benefit? Well, rather than having to prove a whole lot of things in court, if you've got a registered trademark, you can prevent someone infringing it almost immediately. It's a very, very powerful registration. But apart from that, have a look at what intellectual property you are using in your business and we can give you advice about how to best protect it. So if you've got any queries, contact me, Ross Millen at Millens. We're here to help. Thank you.
