A trademark is a word, symbol, design, combination of letters or numbers, or other device that identifies and distinguishes products and services in the marketplace. Once developed through advertising, marketing, trade shows, and other means, trademarks become one of your most valuable assets. Your customers identify your firm with your trademark.

Anything that distinguishes the products and/or services of a company and is capable of graphic representation can be protected as a trademark. To cut a long story short, you can register much more as trademarks than you probably imagine. For example:

• Wordmark
• Figurative mark (Logo)
• Combined word and figurative mark
• Slogans
• Colours
• Abbreviations/Initials
• Shapes
• Sounds

For maximum protection, more than one trademark registration may be necessary (for instance, for a word mark and a separate device mark). We will be pleased to advise you about all options relevant to your company and its trademarks.

A trademark provides protection to the owner of the mark by ensuring the exclusive right to use it to identify goods or services, or authorize another to use it in return for payment. The period of protection varies, but a trademark can be renewed indefinitely beyond the time limit on payment of additional fees. Trademark protection is enforced by the courts, which in most systems have the authority to block trademark infringement.

In a larger sense, trademarks promote initiative and enterprise world-wide by rewarding the owner of trademarks with recognition and financial profit. Trademark protection also hinders the efforts of unfair competitors, such as counterfeiters, to use similar distinctive signs to market inferior or different products or services.

• Using a trademark does not provide you with trademark rights in all countries. Should somebody else register a similar trademark for similar products or services, you will have no rights to object to this use under normal circumstances.
• To avoid such a situation, it is wise to register your trademark at the earliest possible stage, in the relevant countries. Only by registration of the trademark, will you acquire exclusive rights to a trademark.
• A registered trademark entitles you to act against infringements. Based on trademark rights, you can take action not only against identical and similar trademarks, but also on certain conditions, against trade names and domain names. Trademark registration offers wide protection.

When registering a trademark, you need to specify the products and services that will be associated with your trademark. The large majority of countries of the world have adopted the International Classification of Nice. This system groups all products and services into 45 classes – 34 for products and 11 for services – permitting you to specify precise and clear classes covering your trademark. The protection that is offered to a registered trademark covers only the classes specified at the time of registration, thereby allowing two identical trademarks to coexist in distinct classes.
We provide a helpful Class Search tool, which allows you to easily determine the classes your products or services are related to. You can find the link to this application when ordering your service.

If you do business abroad or if you expect to do so in the future, you would be wise to register your trademark abroad. Every country has its own trademark register. In principle, you would require registration in every country. Fortunately, however, many countries have signed treaties, which save a lot of time and money. If you wish to register your trademark in the whole of the European Union, only one registration is required. Even outside Europe, there are many countries that co-operate, which means that one international registration results in protection in numerous countries.

We are absolutely frank about the probabilities of registration and we deeply care about our clients’ time and money. If you wish to register your trademark (logo, name) in more than one country, please let us know which countries you prefer and we would be pleased to determine the strategy for your trademark applications. There are three options for registering a trademark:

An International Registration enables you to register a trademark in several countries at a time. Generally speaking, an International registration offers you the same protection as a National Registration in the countries concerned. Before a request for International Registration of a trademark can be submitted, you should already have an application or registration for the same trademark in the country of origin, that is, the member state where your business is established. We shall be glad to give you further information on the matter.

International Registration System- List of Countries.

Albania, Algeria, Antigua & Barbuda, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bhutan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, European Union, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany,

Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Islamic Republic of Iran, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Madagascar, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands Antilles, Norway, Poland, Portugal,

Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sudan, Sultanate of Oman, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Zambia.

European Union (Community Trademark)

A EU registration provides protection for all countries of the European Union through one single application. The request for registration of a European trademark is to be submitted to the European Trademark Office. That Office assesses whether the trademark meets the absolute requirements which the Law sets on a European trademark, for instance, whether the trademark is sufficiently distinctive. If there are no problems on that score the Office undertakes an obligatory official search for any older similar trademarks included in its own European Trademarks Register. The outcome is purely informative and cannot be a reason for refusing the application for the trademark.

Once the application has passed the preliminary phase, the trademark will be published for opposition purposes. Holders of older rights in one or more countries of the European Union then have the opportunity, within the time limit set, to raise objections to the application of the trademark by submitting an opposition. If this opposition cannot be contested successfully, the entire application will be rejected for all countries.

Should your European application be rejected because of an insurmountable problem in one of the Union countries, then the European application for the remaining countries of the European Union can be converted to national applications. This is called “conversion”. The conversion upholds the date of application of the European application. By a recent amendment, it is now possible to include the entire European Union as one “country” in an International Registration. Should there be problems with a trademark, then conversion is possible by adding the individual countries separately to the International registration.

National

Some countries, for example Canada, India, Dubai are not (yet) associated with the International Registration System, nor do they belong to the European Union. In these countries the only way to obtain protection for your trademark is to submit a national application. Please be aware of the fact that each country has it own requirements.

We will gladly inform you about the national requirements for each country.