Brand name, Business, Product: Get Registered and Protect Yourself!

Have you still not registered your business, product or service brand to protect it?

Do you know the enormous risk of not having registered your brand in the geographic area in which you commercialise your products and services?

It is fundamental to register your trademark and to protect it in the geographical space of your business activity. Why? Because your business brand is worth money!

All the money that you’ve invested in, online and offline,

advertising for your business,

all the striving to get to be someone known and renowned in your sector,

all the efforts that you put every day to improve your products and services,

and differentiate yourself from your competitors,

all this has a major impact on the value that your trademark acquires.

Many professionals and business commit a big mistake. They work without protection and peace of mind coming from registering a trademark and its exclusive possession.

Your brand represents, therefore, the value of your company or business. It protects you from frauds and forgeries. Also, a trademark can even be sold or transferred for its own economic value it was associated with.

Any product or service that can be sold has an associated brand that should be protected. The level of protection is related to the area in which you perform your activity. For example, you can register your trademark in Spain or in another country of the European Union, or register your European Union trademark if you are doing business at that level. Finally, you may even register your worldwide trademark, if that is your current or potential market area. In general, you register your brand for a period of ten years, successively renewable by another ten years’ period, and so on.

The cost of processing and protecting a brand is very affordable, and has no comparison with the tangible and intangible value that gives you the protection of your brand, and therefore of your investment, as a way of monetising intellectual property for your business.

What does your Brand represent?

Your brand is not only your company’s name, it is usually is also the logo associated to it. Both must be registered and protected for the area of activity in which you develop it. For example, if you are a cafeteria, or restaurant, shoe shop, or any other type of business, and have your name and logo visible to the public, as it usually happens, and as a way to make your name, it is vital to protect your brand from other business, and especially from any one that may operate in your same sector. That is, another business using your same brand will cause a subsequent enormous damage and prejudice to you, because of the confusion caused to your customers, providers, etc.

You might even find yourself in the unpleasant situation that other businesses began to use your same brand and registered it before you did, and may be they sued you and forced you to stop using your own brand, even making you pay damages. These situations, although they may seem unbelievable, occur more often than one might think.

How to initiate a business activity?

On the other hand, the logical steps to initiate an activity and begin to use your trademark are the following:

   1º Get advice and help from your Law Firm’s experts in intellectual property. Ensure that the brand that you want to use is not already registered and protected. Imagine the cost in advertising (posters, digital signage, your name’s signboard for your physical store, etc) to publicise your brand. Then you find out that it’s already registered! Or worse, that you are sued for damages by the owner of that trademark already registered! You will not only lose your investment, but you will also face sanctions.

   2º Check that your choice of mark is not already registered. Now it is time to protect it.

   3º Finally, start to invest in your brand and to build and develop it, making it known and increasing its value gradually while you calmly develop our activity.

Doing extraordinary things in your business is in your power, benefitting from the guarantee granted by your registered brand, having the right to oppose any other person or company that wants to register another mark that could be confused with yours, or even to sue someone for damage caused to your brand and business.

If you have any doubt or if you want to protect and register your trademark, please do not hesitate to contact us. We, Pérez Parras Economists & Lawyers Firm in Malaga and Nerja are experts in intellectual property.  Many of our clients already develop their activities with peace of mind, knowing that the value of their brands grows every day, and that they are not going to see their business activity disturbed by others.