Are trademarks too expensive to enforce?
Is it true that there’s no point in getting your brain registered as a trademark because it’s simply too expensive to enforce? I actually heard this on a business course that I went on, the coach at the front of the class said, “Don’t worry about getting your trademark registered. You won’t be able to enforce it anyway because it’s too expensive.”
My answer to that is firstly, business coaches shouldn’t be giving legal advice and secondly, that’s quite wrong. Now If you go to court on any matter, it can be expensive, but the whole point of the trademark registration is that you’ve got your trademark certificate. Then if somebody uses your name or a similar brand name on your goods or services, you say, “Here’s my trademark certificate, don’t use the same name, you’re infringing.” In my 20 plus years, I have never seen a case where somebody has a registration and someone else is using infringing then the infringer continues to use after being notified. I’ve never seen a case that needed to go to court in those circumstances.
Business people are business people for a reason, if you’ve got data rights and you’ve got your trademark certificate, then you show them that what they’re doing is infringing, they will stop. They will change the brand name because they don’t wanna go to court any more than you do. So on the one hand, it is expensive to go to court but the trademark certificate is to avoid going to court. Now, let’s look at the opposite scenario.
Imagine you were in that course with me and you went, this business guru has just saved me some money, I am not gonna bother registering my trademark. What could happen then? This guy over here who liked the same name, could get a trademark registered and he could come to you and say, “Here’s my trademark certificate! You’re infringing me,” you’re gonna go. “Hold on, but I had it first, and my business coach said I didn’t need to register it.” So this guy goes, “Too bad, here’s my trademark certificates, I’ve got it registered and you haven’t.”
So get your trademark registered to avoid that situation. So that you’ve got the rights thereby blocking somebody else from getting the rights and then coming back and suing you. My name is Cathryn Warburton and I am The Legal Lioness.
