Register words or logo as trade mark?
Hello, savvy-business owners, trademarks and logos. When you get your trademark protected, should you include a logo with that? The answer is it depends on your trademark, and it depends on your logo. If you have a word that may be considered descriptive, then you definitely will need a logo added to it.
For example, my wonderful clients Mick and Philliper, run a website which is an educational resource called PositiveSex and they are just encouraging people to talk about sexuality in a positive way, without the smut. Their trademark was considered to be too descriptive to get registered without a logo. The intellectual copy office said “You know, there might be lots of educational websites out there that want to call their services ‘Positive Sex’, that is a description, and not a brand”.
The way to think about it is, does your trademark or your business name that you’re wanting to trademark set you apart from other businesses? Think of a farm, the cattle, they’re gonna get branded with the owner’s brand. If the cattle get mixed together from different farms, you could easily tell which are your cattle, and which are your neighbors’ cattle. It’s the same thing with brands or trademarks. So, if you’re wanting a name that’s going to set you apart from other people, it can’t be too descriptive, because other people might describe their businesses that way.
PositiveSex was too descriptive for what they were doing. For example, Apple, for computers. Apple does describe a fruit, but it doesn’t describe the computers. So if your brand name is something that is unrelated to your field of what you’re offering your clients, you can still get it registered. The best thing really to do, is book a phone call with me, or send me a personal message on social media, send me an email, with your business name that you’re interested in protecting, and include your logo in it.
I will be able to tell you in 5 seconds whether I think you should file them together, as a word plus logo, or file the words on their own. Filing the words by itself gives you slightly stronger brand protection, so that’s always recommended if you can secure just the words on their own. But if you do words plus logo, it still gives you very good protection and some trademarks just have to go with words plus logo. Anyway I hope that’s helped you out, shine bright always, my name is Cathryn Warburton, and I am The Legal Lioness.
