In the book, “The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board” Keith J. Cunningham describes how smart people do dumb things. Business is an intellectual sport, yet many entrepreneurs and business owners cause themsel
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Why would you want to trademark a colour given that colour is difficult to trademark, and is part and parcel of every visual identity, even those that opt for black and white? It is rare to hear of someone having to r
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Non-conventional trademarks offer a way to protect the look and feel of a brand.
Although individual components of a brand, such as its colour can be difficult to protect, something I will discuss in a follow up post in the f
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Let’s begin by considering the terminology as it’s all too common when it comes to brands to find people have different meanings in mind. I’ll then explain the role of trademarks and why and how to be strategic with them.
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As trademarks give their owners a monopoly right to identify their products or services an important caveat about them is that they must be distinctive.
A generic identifier such as the colour yellow for Cheerios or a name t
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The difficulty with colour as a brand identifier is that there is no interim legal protection available to rely on as you build up recognition. You may remember from a previous blog post that Coca Cola had design protection of
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November 1, 2008
Elvis Presley [1997] R.P.C. 543 and Linkin Park [2006] E.T.M.R. 74 are examples of cases which have highlighted the problems that can arise when famous people or groups try to protect their name through trademark law, in order to ex...
February 11, 2009
IP lawyers always become excited when they find an example of a trade mark in danger of becoming generic. The case in point is the trade mark for NETBOOK, pointed out in this blog post. NETBOOK was registered as a trade mark in t...
March 6, 2009
A trademark conveys the image, personality and the origin of the products to a customer. Through this information, the consumer will make an economic decision to purchase. Thus, trademarks are crucial in developing a company’s strategy...
April 3, 2009
We are alarmed by the increasing number of scammers that target trade mark applicants in the UK and the EU. Clearly some people are misled into paying the fees otherwise the scams would not continue as they do.
The scammers send unso...
April 14, 2009
Domain names are an important aspect of branding. When registering domain names people often wonder which domains to buy. Some advisers advocate buying the sucks.com version of your brand to protect against aggrieved consumers who m...
May 12, 2009
What is a scam?
A scam is a confidence trick, confidence game, or con for short (also known as a scam) is an attempt to intentionally mislead a person or persons …. usually with the goal of financial or other gain…”
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