Copying is so rife in business that if you have a profitable niche or concept, it would be surprising if competitors didn’t sooner or later try to capture some of your market share.

They will borrow freely from other businesse...

Although household name brands invariably have distinctive visual identities – for example, Coca-Cola’s bottle shape, and Nike’s swoosh – the primary sign through which any brand is identified is its name.

It is worth thinking ...

When choosing a new name, it can be confusing to know the order in which to do things – such as registering domain names, a company name, designing a new logo and so on.

People tend to do all these things and then only at the e...

Whilst the classification rules apply to the majority of trademarks, famous marks operate under slightly different rules. A famous mark has a much broader scope of protection than an ordinary mark. This is due to its widespread r...

If you have trademarked your brand name, it can be disconcerting to find that someone else beat you to it and registered it on a social media site.

The latest dispute to erupt on this question involves Instagram where Kalamazoo...

Brand identity is an essential component of any business. Put simply, the name of your brand is the first point of communication for your business to your target market. It is a vehicle for the associations related to your p...

For companies, brand planning is an important aspect in brand execution. As far as we know, the best brands are also the best planned brands including the legal side. In a recent turn of events Lindt, the Swiss chocolatier, has...

As an IP lawyer, I am well aware of how little intellectual property is understood in entrepreneurship circles. Even MBA courses barely address the topic. Yet the digital economy has many implications on the relevance of Intellect...

It can be difficult to know how much to reveal about your business during the pitch process. If you’re pitching in a public forum, should you risk giving your original ideas away? Is the exposure and possible investment fund...

Every business will have intellectual property to protect, although the actions to take will be very different depending on the business and the intellectual property involved.

Say you’ve invented some innovative way to solv...