If you have one, you may wonder how to protect your trademark!
When talking about the advertising, marketing and sales of a business’s goods or services, business and legal texts will generally talk about brands or trademarks; or, if they do address both, they deal with them as completely separate topics. As a student of both the business and legal worlds, I think this is a mistake.
While not necessarily synonyms, brand and trademarks are definitely symbiotic creatures and one should never be considered without the other. Both terms are related in that they refer to the same things – identifiers of goods and services in the market place. One is a business term (brand) and one is legal (trademark).
Trademark rights are the mechanism a business uses to protect the goodwill and name recognition it has developed in a brand. Marketing professionals like certain brands because of the commercial impression they project, how they resonate with consumers, and may other factors. Attorneys like certain trademarks because of their strength, breadth, and protectability. The successful business attempts to achieve the Zen-like state of balance between the two. So how do you protect your trademark? …
This is another great blog post by one of our oldest and best clients; Leyendecker & Lemire partner Mr. Peter Lemire talks about how you must make sure your Mark can be protected. It could be too generic or be vulnerable for many other reasons.
