VeryMark are Trade Mark & Copyright Attorneys specialising in brand and design protection, character and personality rights, domain name dispute resolution, brand & image licensing, and also in protecting the work of the creative industries.

The name and identity of your business, your brand name or corporate identity, can be the most important asset you own.
Nowadays, identity theft is not uncommon, and it happens to businesses too – and it’s only too easy, even if you’re only a small firm, an unscrupulous competitor or ex-employee can pirate you on the Internet.
Even without deliberate copying, confusion can happen if someone elsewhere in the country sets up under a similar name and starts to expand until their business collides with yours.

Registration of a name at Companies House or as a domain name gives no protection, it simply stops anybody registering the identical name in the same way.

Trade mark registration, however, protects all forms of commercial usage of a name, whether as a company name, business name, product name, shop name, domain name, website name, in fact any form of commercial activity under the same or similar name which may lead to confusion.

Usage alone of a business name or identity affords a certain amount of protection under the common law against ‘passing off ‘. However, this is not only more limited in scope but legal actions for passing off tend to be both more expensive and more uncertain in outcome as well as requiring evidence of likely confusion.

On the other hand – unlike protection for passing off – trade mark registration not only gives immediate national coverage but it is not necessary to show that confusion is likely for trade mark infringement to be established in the case of identicality.

Accordingly, if for example you only trade in Cornwall but have your name as a registered trade mark, and someone else then starts up in Scotland using the same name for the same kind of goods/services as you have registered for, then they can be guilty of infringement even though the geographical separation means that there is no confusion.
Trade mark registration can thus be both a potent weapon and a strong shield to protect your business name and identity. It can also increase a business’s value by strengthening its appeal to investors or licensees.

We all insure our houses, not because of the level of risk but because it is our most valuable personal asset. Have you protected your business’s most valuable asset?