About this post
- Clearing a new brand name and protecting it is a complex subject that requires professional help.
- Choosing the “right” brand creation strategy makes a huge difference to the “quality” of a brand from a legal point of view
- This guide will help you avoid the most common legal problems with a brand (other than the rights of others).
- Do not use a new brand name without first making sure that others do not already have rights in it!
What is a Brand?
- A brand is a way of identifying the goods or services of one organisation from those of another.
- Registered trade marks give the best legal protection for a brand.
- A trade mark is a type of intellectual property right.
About Intellectual Property Generally
Here are a couple of useful websites:
Why choose a “legally strong” brand name?
- It is less expensive and simpler to protect;
- The less likely that anyone will use the same brand for the same goods or services as you;
- The more likely that you will be able to stop someone using the same or similar brand for similar goods or services.
"Good" brands...
- Invented words: great because they have no “baggage”. KODAK for photographic film;
- Words that have no natural relationship with your products or services. PENGUIN for books;
- Acronyms. FIAT for cars;
- Combinations of different words or part of words. SLUMBERLAND for beds;
- Logos and designs, but only if they do not relate to your products or services. The Nike "swoosh” for footwear & clothing;
- Words that relate to the benefits or values of your products or services. JAGUAR for cars.
- Foreign words sometimes work too. FORMICA for plastic laminates (“formica” is ant in Italian).
"Bad" brands…
- Words that describe the products or services, or features of them. KETTLE CLEAN for preparations for cleaning kettles;
- Words that are highly suggestive of the products or services or features of them. FROOT LOOPS for cereals in the form of fruit favoured loops;
- Geographical place names;
- People’s names (except for really unusual names);
- “Talking up” words. SUPER, CLASSIC or PREMIUM;
- Common terms in the industry or business sector in question. DRILL DOWN for database software;
- Marks that are only 1, 2 or 3 characters long;
- Marks that consist of numbers less than 5 characters long;
- Unconventional trade marks (such as colours and sounds).
About descriptive trade marks
- For many organisations, the obvious way to create a brand is to link it to the product or service. After all, you want to communicate this to the public. Right?
- In the last few years, of the top 100 brands in the world (according to Interbrand), only 1 actually described the goods or services of that business, and that is all that business did! It was PIZZA HUT.
- The most successful brands say nothing about any product and so work across a wide range of goods and service. For example, the VIRGIN brand works on cola, air travel, beauty products and financial services to name a few.
- Think about this: are you ever likely to use the brand in a way that you are not also going to want to use other words or images to say something about the product or services. If this is the case, why shouldn’t the brand be distinctive and non-descriptive?
- If you use descriptive words, the chance are so are your competitors. How are you ever going to stand out if you use the same language for your brands? A car is a car, but a ROLLS ROYCE car is not the same as a KIA car.
Getting professional help
- We can help in brand creation, whether working with you on the strategy or by actually creating brand options for you.
- We can also provide practical advice and act as a “critical friend”.
- We can discuss with you strategies for protection and what other rights might be relevant.
- Talking to us might help you see the bigger picture of legal protection.
- Contact Andrew Mills
Final Warning
- Using a descriptive brand might mean you can never get rights in your brand and that other can use it without you being able to stop them.
- Using a brand without clearance searching first might mean you infringe someone else’s rights (you don’t even need to know they exist to infringe).
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