Search Trademark

In marketing, there is a particular strategy known as branding. In many ways, trademarks are designed to protect your brand from use by others.

An Introduction to Trademarks

A trademark is a form of intellectual property. Intellectual property is owned by the person or business creating it. With practically all forms of intellectual property, however, you have to take steps to formally notify the world of your property and protect it.

A trademark is a distinctive mark used to identify a product, company, service or device. When you think about it, you are very familiar with trademarks. At the risk of being sued to the high heavens, the following are trademarks: Coca Cola, Pepsi, Google, EBay and Toyota. Each

of these words mean something to you and are readily identifiable with a product or service in your mind. When you think of EBay, you immediately think of an online auction site that was originally created so the owner s girlfriend could trade Pez dispensers [true]. When you think of Toyota, you think of cars. This is the power of brand recognition and trademarks are used to protect them.

Continue Reading »

In the case of Sportwetten GmbH Gera v the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market ( OHIM ) (2005), it was held that the registration of a Community trade mark was not contrary to public policy or public morality.

On 11 January 1999, OHIM published a figurative mark incorporating the word INTERTOPS in respect of Class 42: bookmakers and betting services of all kinds.

Sportwetten GmbH was the proprietor of the trade mark INTERTOPS SPORTWETTEN, registered in Germany in respect of the same types of services.

Continue Reading »

At one point or another, we ve all seen a product or business name with a small, encircled R floating next to it. You ve probably wondered what this R symbol really means, and how exactly it got there in the first place. Most people will tell you that it means something to the effect of registered, but that s only a small part of the significance behind the circled R.

It s correct that this symbol does imply the term registered, but registered with whom, and how?

A “registered trademark”, or , refers to a name, slogan or logo that has been officially registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Registering a

trademark is beneficial to a business because it publicly states that your trademark is registered with the USPTO and therefore, you have exclusive rights to that name within your industry. This means that if your business had a registered trademark, and you found another business of a similar nature utilizing your name or logo, you would *likely have the legal right to use your name!

Continue Reading »

A ground-breaking decision was delivered by the Court of Appeal in the cases of Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holdings Ltd (and others) [2006] and Macrossan s Application [2006] on 27 October 2006. This important decision means that there is now a new method by which patent examiners will assess whether or not an invention is patentable. The decision is especially relevant to those wishing to patent business methods or computer programs .

A patent is effectively a legal monopoly for a process or product. When granted a patent, the patent holder will be exclusively allowed to exploit a patented product or process for the life of the patent. When a patent is applied for, the

patent examiners must ensure that the product or process which is the subject matter of the patent application meets the test for patentability. Up until this ground-breaking ruling, the test was extremely complicated to apply in practice due to the large amount of case law dealing with the interpretation of the appropriate legislation. Now the test has been concisely summarised by this decision.

Continue Reading »

Intellectual Property (IP) 101

IP includes patents, trademarks, and copyrights. A patent provides an exclusive right to an invention. A trademark provides an exclusive right to an indication of source of a product. A copyright provides an exclusive right to an original work. A service mark provides an exclusive right to a service or origin of a service.

United States copyrights accrue automatically, but a work must be registered with the United States Copyright Office to perfect the federal copyright. Trademark rights can also accrue without a federal registration, but those rights are weaker, and a federal registration is preferred in almost all situations.

Continue Reading »