It’s essential to file a trademark as it helps to safeguard your brand, which is the heart of every business. Filing a trademark is very demanding, but it’s worth the effort due to the protection it provides to your brand.
Keep in mind that if you fail to register your trademark, another person can. If that happens, you risk losing your business. But if you’ve secured a registered trademark, you not only protect your brand, but you’ll prevent someone else from using similar signs for their business.
What is a trademark?
A trademark is also known as a service mark. It includes any name, device, symbol, or word used to identify the products and services of a particular company. Essentially, a trademark can be termed as a company logo or a business name. With a unique and registered trademark, your prospective customers can identify your business with ease. That keeps you on top of the game.
What are the effects of not registering your trademark?
With an unprotected trademark, you legally may not expand your business. But if you’ve registered your brand, you may sue parties that attempt to conflict with your trademark or those using conflicting brands, thereby sabotaging your business operations.
Once your services and products grow, your trademark value appreciates. Besides, serious investors assess whether you have registered your trademark to secure your brand before engaging in any business activities with the business. Below are several reasons for registering your trademark;
Additional legal protection
Although you are still entitled to legal protection with an unregistered trademark, you may have a hard time in case someone copy’s your brand. Proofing your brand ownership is overwhelming.
However, if your trademark is registered, you’ll have additional protections. That includes presumed ownership, which lessens the burden of proofing brand ownership.
Protects your trademark from being copied
Provided you’ve registered your trademark, other users cannot use a similar name or symbol to register their brand. That enhances the uniqueness and improves your business visibility. Note that if anyone attempts using the same trademark, you can sue them. If one is sued for using an already registered trademark, they are subject to fines and legal fees, or the court could order them to give up the profit they’ve obtained using the unregistered mark.
The business person involved can be asked to pay damages to the rightful owner of the registered trademark. After that, they’ll have to rename their business and that means spending more money and loss of customers.
You are legally allowed to expand your business
If you haven’t registered your trademark, your business growth is not guaranteed. That’s because you are not allowed to expand the business legally. But with a registered trademark, you can expand the business to other countries using the same trademark.
Avoid starting from scratch
Supposing you haven’t registered your trademark only to learn later that the trademark is already registered with another business. In such a case, you risk hefty fines and being forced to start from scratch. Changing a company logo is not only expensive, but it may take forever before you regain your customer’s trust
