If there is an existing similar mark which covers similar goods or services, the owner can sue you for trade mark infringement if you start to use your mark. The implications of that could be that you will have to cease your activities under your new mark, and/or have all your brochures, labels and other materials with the infringing trade mark delivered up to the Court for destruction.

If you want to stop others using your trade mark, the first thing is that it mustn't be descriptive or commonplace. You can't protect a trade mark that is, for instance, SOAP for soap, or CLEANSE for shampoo, or CLEANING SOLUTIONS for cleaning services. You can use a trade mark like that if you want, but it just means that anyone will be able to copy you. In order to protect or register your trade mark, it needs to be something that trade mark professionals call 'distinctive', which just means that it shouldn't be descriptive or commonplace. We can advise you about that.

You can apply for registration in all the countries where you wish to trade. You need your trade mark, the full details of the Applicant company and also an idea of the goods and services that you aim to offer to customers. We will do the rest.

No. We should still perhaps perform trade mark searches to make sure that there is no infringement of the rights of others. Also, since you have started trading without applying to register your trade mark, someone may have got in before you and registered it. But subject to that, it isn't too late. You can apply to register your trade mark at any time. You also don't need to register it in order to trade. A trade mark registration isn't needed in order to use the trade mark. It's to provide you with property in the trade mark as the means to stop others using the same or similar mark.

No, it isn't. A company name registration doesn't provide any property rights in the name. It stops someone owning a company with an identical name, but that's about it. If your company is called Kangaroo Limited, then you should have a trade mark registration if you want to stop people using the trade mark KANGAROO, or something similar.

No, it isn't. You might be able to have some rights in the name if it is well-known to your customers, and is effectively the name they know you by. This is also true with a company name. But to enforce those rights, you need to be able to prove something called 'passing off' in a court of law, which is expensive and difficult to do. A trade mark registration is a more effective tool if, for instance, your web-site is kangaroo.co.uk and you want to stop people using the trade mark KANGAROO, or something similar. We can help you with domain name strategies and registrations as well.

Yes, you can also protect slogans, packaging, shapes, colours and sounds. But these are difficult to obtain protection for. You really need to show that such things function as a trade mark, which means that they would indicate to a consumer that your company offers the goods or services concerned if it is denoted by the slogan, packaging, shapes or colours etc. In other words, if you want to register a particular colour as a trade mark, you need to have been using it consistently, and for quite a while, preferably telling consumers that they are looking for that colour when they want to use your company again.

Yes, there are various ways to get your trade mark registered. We can try to obtain the consent of the prior right holder to your registration for you. Or, we could have the registered trade mark revoked or invalidated, depending on the circumstances. For instance, if a UK trade mark which is registered has not been used for five years, then we can have it revoked. There are similar rules all over the world.

Yes, provided that the similar marks covers identical or similar goods and services to yours and you have registered rights in the relevant country, you should be able to sue for trade mark infringement on the basis of your rights. We can help you with that. If we are successful, that will stop the use of the similar mark by injunction or court order. Or the infringer might settle before that becomes necessary.

In that case, we could still use proceedings for trade mark infringement, but we might be better using a domain name dispute resolution procedure. These are almost always available, although they differ slightly depending whether the domain name is a .com or .co.uk etc. We can do that for you.

Yes, provided that the similar marks covers identical or similar goods and services to yours and you have rights in the relevant country, you should be able to oppose registration on the basis of your rights. We can help you with that.

We can organise a watching service for you. That will watch all the trade mark applications in the countries that you want to look at, and filter the relevant ones. We can advise you if you should oppose.

You could sell the trade marks to them, or licence them in return for a royalty. Which you do will often depend on the business arrangement you come to with your friend, but whatever it is, it should be in writing. We can help you with all the legal documentation. You will also need to record the transaction against your trade mark registrations and we can help you with that too.

Yes we can. Actually, trade mark registrations can be perpetual, but they do need to be 'renewed' and that takes the payment of a fee and a system of making sure that renewal dates are not missed. If you give us all the details of the trade marks that you have (or as much as you can get together) we will take care of that for you.

Yes, you can register it as a design, provided that it is new (that it doesn't resemble a design which is in existence) and hasn't been first disclosed to the public over twelve months ago. To be registrable, the design must consist of the outward appearance of a product or part of it, which results from the lines, contours, colour, shape, texture, materials, and its ornamentation. Registered designs provide similar property rights and effective exclusivity as trade mark registrations. They are renewable every five years up to a maximum protection of twenty-five years.

Yes, you can, as long as you don't wait longer than twelve months following the disclosure of the design to the public. That means that you don't need to count the period of time during which you are, for example, developing the design, or showing it to colleagues, or only disclosing within confidential meetings with manufacturers, but once you announce it at a trade fair, or publish it in a magazine, or start selling your product, then you must apply to register your design within twelve months of that. But at least that should give you time to decide if you can justify investing in its protection.

The design would probably be registered because the registration authorities don't investigate how long a design has been available, or even if it is new, or has already been registered by someone else. However, all these enquiries will be made by a third party and their lawyers if you tried to enforce the design against them. So a design which has been disclosed for over twelve months before the date of application for it to be registered is likely to be shown to be invalid on this basis. If a registered design is invalidly registered, then you cannot use it to protect your design.

Yes, you would. Protection is available for designs which are not registered, and this is called the Unregistered Design Right. However, this isn't as good as a registered design because it only lasts for three years (from disclosure) and is only available as against designs which have been actually copied from yours. So if you need to enforce a registered design right, you need to prove that the design is the sort of design which attracts protection required, and also that the design has been copied.

Yes, you can. Disclosure of the design is not a requirement, it just limits the time you have before you must register the design for it to be valid. Registered designs are published as part of the procedure, but you can delay publication for up to 30 months in order to preserve secrecy.

Copyright automatically attaches to literary, artistic or photographic works etc. and so they are protectable if someone else copies them. But by the same token, you do need to be careful that you are not infringing the copyright of others, even unwittingly. Because there is no requirement for copyright registration, there is no way of searching for prior copyright protected works. So you do need to make sure that you know the origin of much of the content of your productions, at least as far as you possibly can. We can advise you if you are concerned about copyright issues.

Literary works (which include instruction manuals, articles, computer programs, books, scripts, some databases) dramatic works, musical works, artistic works (such as paintings, photographs, sculptures, maps, architectural drawings, technical drawings, diagrams, logos) typographical arrangements, sound recordings, films and broadcasts (which protects live feeds, for instance from a web-cam). You can see that some works which attract copyright protection can also be registered as trade marks or designs. Clearly, the more important the copyright work, the more time and money should be invested in protecting it in as many ways as possible!