When a key player in the Government’s plans to strengthen the IP framework, encourages business owners to file their own trade marks, explaining this is to help them afford trade mark registration, I wonder what’s going on.

Whilst the most common use of trademarks is to legally protect brand names or logos, this is by no means the only way in which a trademark reinforces a brand.

Trademarks act to identify the source of a good or service to consu...

Choosing names that say what your business does on the tin may not be the best approach to choosing domain names online, despite it being an approach many businesses have adopted in the past.

Often, it seems like a good idea ...

Since writing my book, Legally Branded, a number of business owners have thanked me for making this fundamentally important subject of intellectual property (particularly trade marks) understandable.

Some entrepreneur friend...

It can be difficult when you start up to know how to spend your resources. Keeping a tight rein on expenses is essential in the early days, but it’s equally important not to neglect important issues like intellectual property ...

How to protect your brand when you rebrand

Note: This post was written in 2014 and describes Azrights' rebrand at that time. The IP principles discussed remain fully applicable today. 

Our 2014 brand refresh involved a new l...

 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...

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.

A notable dispute on this question involved Instagram, where Kalamazoo Beer Exc...

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...

What are trademarks?

Trade marks identify your products and services so that customers may find the products and services they like and avoid those they didn’t enjoy. If consumers have had a good experience with a business, o...