Advice and consultancy Registering your intellectual property
It is important to protect your intellectual property in all countries where you manufacture or offer products and services. Trade marks and designs can be registered for individual countries or for multiple countries. For example, it is possible to obtain a single registration covering the entire European Union or a number of countries in a single International Registration.
Trade mark registration
In the United Kingdom, the best way to protect your trade mark is by means of registration on the Trade Marks Register. An unregistered trade mark can give you rights but only if you have used the trade mark for a long time and your customers recognise the trade mark as indicating that you are the manufacturer of the product or the service provider. If you do not register your trade mark, before you can enforce your unregistered rights against a competitor, you will have to prove you are the owner of the rights. A trade mark registration is proof of ownership.
In many other countries, only registered trade marks have any protection.
In addition to the registration of the name or word mark, you can also protect other aspects of a trade mark. These include:
- a logo
- a special style of writing
- product packaging
- three dimensional shapes
- smells
- sounds
With a trade mark registration you can object to the use and registration of identical or similar trade marks by another person or business. It gives you the right to prevent the use of the trade mark for the same or similar products and services.
A trade mark registration is usually valid for a period of ten years and protection can be renewed for further ten-year periods, indefinitely.
Domain name registration
A domain name is often an important marketing instrument for communicating with your customers. We can halp you to register any gTLDs such as .com, .info, .eu, etc. and ccTLDs, country extensions such as .co.uk.
The European body for the registration of .eu domains, EURid, has commended Novagraaf on the high quality of its services.
Design registration
The design of two and three-dimensional products, such as ornamentation, decoration, fabric designs, packaging shapes, bottles and furniture, can be protected on condition that they have a new appearance and distinctive character. Your design must not resemble already existing designs too closely.
It is important to consider protecting your design by registration at a very early stage. Disclosure of the design to potential customers can prevent you obtaining registration of the design. In the UK and the European Union, there are grace periods allowing you to "test market" your design before committing to it, but they are short and if any one else brings out a product bearing your design in that period any novelty could be effectively destroyed and prevent you protecting your design.
If you need to discuss your product design with a potential manufacturer or distributor prior to applying for a design, we can provide you with a confidentiality agreement, but even then we would recommend applying to protect your design by registration before undertaking such discussions.
Within the European Union, a design is protected even if not registered for three years following its introduction on the market. This is only a limited form of protection, however, because you are only entitled to act against deliberate imitations or very similar designs. In the UK, unregistered design rights are protected for ten years from the date of introduction on the market but in the last five years anyone is entitled to obtain a licence to use the design upon payment of appropriate royalties, called a Licence of Right. UK unregistered design rights do not apply to two dimensional ornamentation/ surface decoration of products.
With registered designs it is not necessary to demonstrate intention to imitate. When designs are too similar to one another, demonstrating confusion is sufficient to assume infringement of the registered design.
Register your design in all countries where you produce and market your design. A design can be registered in each country individually or, for example, the entire European Union can be covered with one single application.
A design registration is usually valid for an initial period of five years, which can subsequently be renewed for periods of five years usually up to a maximum term of twenty-five years.
Changes
Since trade mark and design rights are registered rights, the information on the register relating to details of the trade mark or design owner must always be kept up to date. If, for example, your company name changes as a result of a merger or takeover, the Registry must be informed. So please let us know of any changes in good time to ensure that they are included on the trade mark or design registers.
More information
If you would like to register your intellectual property, contact the Novagraaf attorneys. You can reach us by telephone on +44 (0)20 7608 3098. We can register your trade mark, domain name or design promptly and efficiently.
