In Part 1 of a 2 Part Series, Jerry Gomez, principal at Gomez Partners Lawyers and Consultants, explores the key steps in Brand Protection Strategies. The elements of your brand carry your reputation and can only be protected with a comprehensive legal strategy. 

A brand identity consists of all the elements which distinguish your goods and services from others. The elements in a brand identity include business names, product names, domain names, logos, taglines, slogans, product shapes and distinctive colour schemes.

Clearly, these elements are a major asset if not the most valuable asset of any business. In order to protect all the elements of your brand you require a comprehensive strategy which must start at the very beginning.

The key initial steps for your brand protection strategy include the following:

• Distinctiveness. Ensure that the elements of your brand are distinctive and unique to your company’s goods and services. The trademarks office may refuse to register marks which are not distinctive. Invented names which are acronyms, conjoined words or new words are often among the easiest to register as trademarks. Examples are Google, Exxon, IKEA, PayPal and Microsoft.

• Avoid ‘descriptive’ names. Although it makes it easy for consumers to identify your services, descriptive or generic type names are more difficult to register. The courts do not allow the monopoly of a descriptive name given that other genuine traders may want to rightly use it.

• Confidentiality. Maintain confidentiality during the development of your brand by making key staff, business partners, advertising agencies, marketing consultants or anyone who will be made aware of your brand development sign well drafted confidentiality agreements.

• Rights Assignment. Ensure that you are assigned in writing, the full rights, including copyright, in the elements in the brand, where anyone especially a third party, advertising or design agency helps develop your brand.

• Research the word marks and phrases in your brand with the trade mark and business names registries and internet to find out how, if at all, they have been used. If they are commonly used words or phrases, then you should really reconsider your branding options.

If you think of brand development as an investment and your brand as a key asset of your company, then you must start safeguarding all its elements from the beginning.

Gomez Partners Lawyers and Consultants can help you prepare an effective brand protection strategy. For further information please call Jerry Gomez on (03) 9017 6881 or visit their website.

Calibre Business Integration are proud business partners of Gomez Partners Lawyers and Consultants.

Intellectual Property Law is a complex area of Law. The contents of this article cannot be relied on as a substitute for professional legal advice.