What Is A Trade-mark?
Trade-marks are a way to protect your brand or business from other people pretending to be associated with you. So what that means is, you can stop somebody who’s trying to copy your name. The general idea would be, in the example of Coca-Cola. Say Coca-Cola makes a beverage (which they do) called coke, and it’s very popular, everybody drinks it, everybody knows the brand name called Coca-Cola. Then, somebody else comes along and makes a new type of similar drink (brown syrupy liquid) and calls it Cuca-Cola and uses the same swirly letters in red and white. So this Cuca-Cola, is now being sold at the same stores that Coca-Cola is being sold at. Coca-Cola could sue Cuca-Cola for trade-mark infringement because there is a good chance that somebody would think that the Cuca-Cola is somehow related to Coca-Cola, where Cuca-Cola would be making a profit based on the brand associated with Coca-Cola. As a small business owner you can do the same thing. Here in Vancouver, there is a small company at the Richmond Night Market called Rotato. Rotato, makes a potato that they put on a stick and use a drill to spin it out and it makes a big long spiral potato that can be deep fried and covered in sauce. However, somebody else set up a shop right beside them and called it something similar like Rototato. The original owners of the brand Rotato, were able to sue Rototato for trade-mark infringement because they were stealing their brand.
How Do You Get One?
In order to protect your brand with a trade-mark you can register your trade-mark. Registering for a trade-mark can be quite the process so you should hire a trade-mark agent to help you with this. You can also protect your brand even if you are not registered. When you are not registered you lose some rights and some ability to protect yourself but you still have some rights to sue somebody else if they are stealing your brand name.
If you have a business or if you have a brand and you find out somebody else is trying to copy your brand or pretend that their goods are actually coming from you, then you might want to think about suing them for trade-mark infringement.
To find out more you can contact us directly here at ATAC Law.
