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TrademarkHub Blog

4 ways you can legally protect your tech start-up

Many new entrepreneurs are very secretive of their new business idea. Their thinking is that if they were to share a business idea with others, they risk being copied. This is sometimes an unfounded fear and it is worth understanding how your startup can be legally protected and what options you have. Can an idea [...]

What should you do if someone is using your copyrighted work?

A commonly asked question is what should I do If you ever come across your work being used by another company or person without your permission. It has become increasingly common, due to ease of access on the internet, that original works are copied by others. Read below to see what can be done in [...]

How to use your trade mark after registration?

A common question that we get asked is how should a trade mark be used once you have obtained registration. Luckily, there are guidelines available for this, and I’ll summarise them in this post. Imagine a customer looking to buy a new pair of sunglasses. She finds the section for her favourite brand only to [...]

The difference between the trade mark symbols ® and ™

Trade mark filers are often not familiar with the symbols that need to be used with their mark. There are two commonly used trade mark symbols, the TM and the letter R in a circle ®. What do these trade mark symbols mean? The TM symbol is used for unregistered marks to inform the public that the [...]

So, what happens to the EU trade mark if Brexit happens?

The upcoming European Union (EU) referendum is, as expected, dominating the news. The financial markets have been reacted badly to a strong possibility of a British exit, or Brexit, from the EU. There are a lot of questions that have been raised over various matters relating to this ‘Brexit’. What will happen to trade, travel [...]

Jose Mourinho’s Trade Mark: Can Companies Own a Name

During the recent announcement of Jose Mourinho being signed as the manager of Manchester United, it was revealed that his name is a trade mark owned by Chelsea. This was reported to be a stumbling block which delayed the signing. This raises the question on whether a company can own a person’s name as a [...]

The Chinese Trade Mark Saga – Facebook Wins Trade Mark Case

While Apple Inc lost its trade mark case in China, Facebook has made headway by winning their trade mark case for its own brand name. A Chinese vegetable oil and potato chips maker called Zhongshan Pearl River registered ‘face book’ in 2014, but the courts in China have revoked the trade mark. Why did Facebook [...]

Attention! Changes to Copyright Law Coming Into Practice from July 2016

Generally, a copyright protects musical, dramatic, literary and artistic works. Copyright protection is given to these types of works for a period of 70 years after the death of their creator. This rule comes with an exception! According to section 52 CDPA, the current period of protection for artistic works (excluding films) which have been [...]

Registering your brand name

Registering a brand name can mean two different things. It can be either incorporating your company or registering your trade mark, which would be your brand. The latter is the more common understanding of the sentence ‘registering your brand’. How do you register your brand? If by this you mean you are looking to incorporate [...]

Learning from Apple’s trade mark issues in China

Apple Inc, the tech giant, recently lost a court battle over the use of the word ‘iPhone’ on leather goods in China. A local company called Xintong Tiandi will continue to have the legal right to use ‘iPhone’ on leather goods. As expected, Apple wasn’t happy with the decision and will be requesting a retrial [...]

Unregistered and registered design rights

Good design lies at the heart of any good business. An excellent design transforms a product into a brand- think Coca-Cola’s distinctively curvaceous bottle or the iPhone’s iconic product design- so it’s important to protect the appearance of your product. The most common methods of protecting the design of your product here in the UK [...]

How to deal with a trade mark infringement threat

Building a brand takes a lot of work. After all the effort and hard labour you’ve put into creating your distinctive brand, it’s not pleasant to find out someone is using or manipulating the materials you’ve created. If you’ve registered a trade mark and someone is using it, or a deceptively similar mark, without your [...]

Protection under rules of ‘passing off’

It is often believed that the only way to effectively protect your company’s sign (name, slogan, logo, colour, shapes etc) is to obtain a trade mark registration. This might be true in most cases, but in others it is also or only possible to protect your sign through other intellectual property (IP) rights. Copyrights, unregistered [...]

Why you should use a lawyer to file your trade mark registration

Filing a trade mark registration can be an expensive process, so it is unsurprising that many people question whether they should try to reduce costs by filing the application themselves, rather than employing a trade mark attorney. However, it is important to weigh up the potential savings against the risk of problems and higher costs [...]

Trade mark infringement on Google Adwords

Does the use of a trade mark in Google Adwords considered to be an infringement? What about the use of trade marks as keywords to trigger an ad on Adwords? Early last year, Samsung gained some positive coverage within the marketing industry for running the ad shown below. Terminology Keyword – A keyword in online [...]

Changes To The EU Trade Mark Legislation

Attention business owners and entrepreneurs! As of March 23rd 2016, there’s a few changes being made to EU trade mark registration. If you’ve registered a trade mark in the EU or you were planning on doing so, you might need to take notice of a few changes. Registering a trade mark in the EU means [...]

How to choose the right name for your business”?

Your company name is important for a number of reasons, and can make a significant difference in terms of success. It can make your brand well known and that is something every company wants, as it drives traffic and sales. So what does your name need to convey: expertise value uniqueness of your product/service Descriptive or [...]

Is an NDA worth the effort?

In simple words, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) protects the trade secrets of an individual or company from plagiarism or exploitation. They identify what information can be shared with another party and establish how it can or cannot be shared. NDAs are commonly used nowadays. Most online startups have standard NDAs in place, which are used [...]

A Startup’s Guide to Copyrights, Trade Marks & Patents

As a growing number of people start their own businesses, they have to understand the basics of various matters which will affect their business. One area that needs to be understood by entrepreneurs is intellectual property (IP). In this post, we’ll be defining the difference between copyright, patents and trade marks and how important they can be! Read [...]