BGN Entrepreneur

We are all familiar with branded products, indeed one of the things customers look for in an unfamiliar environment is that comforting brand name which tells them that the products on sale will be of reliable quality from a known, or at least recognized source. What is not so well understood by the buying public, or often even by suppliers, is just how important brands, or more precisely “trade marks” are to the commercial life of the country.
It goes back a long way.
Trade marks which stand out and which are therefore immediately memorable are the most successful, in particular those which have no reference to the goods or services to which they relate. In this context one only has to think of ORANGE. What has this got to do with mobile telephones? Nothing! But everyone recognizes it and knows what it is about. And its special value lies in its great distinctiveness, and not because it has any reference to the goods or services provided by the company. Of these memorable marks those which are most valuable are usually those where the owner has chosen to use a word which does not have a meaning at all, for example KODAK which has been around for very a long time.
When trade marks become well known they exert a special pull on the market, and they can be accorded special privileges by the regulatory authorities. Even without being well known it is possible to get protection by registration, even for brand new marks. The major benefit of registration is that it gives the owner of the trade mark a statutory right to prevent anyone else in the same field of interest from using it for their own business, or even from using a mark which is not identical but just ‘similar’. Of course there is a precise legal definition of what constitutes a similar trade mark, and lots of precedents to help judges to decide, but the important thing for the owner of a registered trade mark is that he has rights which can be enforced and backed up by the courts.
Like any system which involves legal rights there are certain complexities to the system, for which reason it helps to have a trained and experienced professional advisor. But the advantage of registration is the ownership of a trade mark, or brand, which not only enhances the image of the business but helps it to thrive.

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