Legal and prevention experts exist to provide Brand Owners with a remedy in law to deter and prevent products being copied or sold by those who are unqualified to do so.

A variety of tools exist to protect brands. One of the most useful is a Trademark.

What is a Trademark?

The need to mark or identify products can be traced back almost to the beginnings of trade itself. At that time a trade mark or sign was often placed on goods to distinguish the goods and services between one trader and another. That practice of using words, symbols, pictures or phrases – or combinations of them – to identify a particular manufacturer’s products continues to the present time.

Internet domain names, slogans, sounds or smells, a product shape, or other non-functional but distinctive aspects of a product or service that might promote or distinguish it in the market place may also be a trademark.

Today, consumers often make their purchasing choices on the basis of recognizable trademarks, such as ‘Coca-Cola’, ‘Nike’, ‘Microsoft’, ‘McDonalds’, ‘Marks and Spencer’, ‘Benetton’ or ‘BMW’.

Little wonder then, that many companies invest considerable sums of money in creating trademarks for a particular brand, product or service. Even larger sums are spent on promoting those trademarks and brands through media advertising and other forms of promotion.

If the trademark is used without authorisation or illegally as a counterfeit, then the rightful owner of the trademark may lose business, goodwill or credibility. Not unnaturally, trademark owners will want to register and obtain protection for their expensively developed and promoted trade marks – their ‘badge’ of trade origin.

Once registered, a trademark owner can take action through the courts and sue for infringement under trade marks law or, in certain circumstances – such as counterfeiting – initiate criminal proceedings.

Other forms of intellectual property

Apart from trade marks used for product and brand identity on goods or in services, there are a number of other ways in which individuals or organisations can protect their own creativity and innovative ideas – their intellectual property or IP – in much the same way that physical property can be protected. Once protected, the owner of such intellectual property can control the nature and way it is used – and be rewarded for its use.

Although some intellectual property rights are protected automatically, most cannot be effectively protected unless they have been applied for, registered and granted. To ensure that intellectual property is correctly protected it is necessary to have some understanding of the main kinds of IP protection that are available:

• Patents - A patent is used to protect the invention or discovery of new and improved products or processes, machines, articles of manufacture, or any new useful improvements thereof, that are capable of industrial application
• Copyrights - A copyright protects an original artistic or literary work in the fields of publishing, music, films, sound recordings and broadcasts - including software and multimedia
• Trademarks - Used for brand identity of goods and services so as to allow distinctions to be made between different manufacturers and trader
• Designs - Used to protect the whole or part of a product’s appearance in terms of shapes, colours, textures, lines, contours and/or the materials of a product and/or its decoration or ornamentation for an article of manufacture

Wider use of marks

Intellectual property can be extended much wider than these four basic types of IP listed above, so as to cover such things as Certification Marks, Collective Marks, Service Marks, and even to varieties of plants or the protection of trade secrets.

Certification Marks for example, are names, symbols or devices used by an organisation to verify or vouch for products and services provided by others, such as the Woolwark, The British Standards Institute’s ‘Kite Mark’ or the ‘Sony Authorised Service Centre’ logo or the ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’. Regional organisations or methods of manufacture may also be examples of certification marks (Champagne from the Champagne region of France, Gouda, Cheddar or Parmesan cheese from their respective cheese making regions in Europe, Smoked Ham from Palma.)

Collective Marks on the other hand are words, labels, symbols phrases or other marks used by members of a group, organisation or union to identify goods or services, such as the International Wool Secretariat’s ‘Wool Mark’ or the IATA logo.

Generally speaking, a Service Mark is the same as a Trade Mark – but promotes services and events rather than products. Examples include the European Cup football competition, the Olympic Games – and the marks or symbols that are used to promote them (the interlocking Olympic circles) – Amazon.com (Internet book store) or Prontaprint (instant printing).

Registration

To be registered a trade mark is commonly defined by Patent registration offices as being:

• distinctive for the goods or services for which registration is sought
• not intended to deceive or being contrary to law or morals
•  not identical or similar enough to earlier registrations for the same or similar goods or services

At the end of the day a trademark or brand name is not just something which distinguishes one company’s products from another. It is much more than that. It adds value, a look and a personality to a product or service in the market place, and even has the ability to become an asset in its own right. An asset which continues almost indefinitely – and which needs to be registered and protected.