When you plan to start a business, you strive very hard to make it distinct and creative compared to its competitors in the market. You plan its distinct brand personality, brand story, brand positioning, guidelines, architecting.
Then based on all these elements, the brand name is intended, and you invest your time and money to get designed meaningful and beautiful brand logo design.
Businesses are all about their brand name or logo, which are trusted and recognized by customers. The corporate world is very saturated each day new players are introduced in the market.
Every person is striving hard to grow and expand the organization, but there is one thing which will make you stand firm in the market concerning your brand logo is security and protection.
Table of Contents
What is a trademark?
It ensures to protect the symbol, logo, slogan, or image that you use in conjunction with your business from your competitors also using that same symbol, logo, slogan or image.
It is a legal process where it is registered as per it is representing a company or service. A trademark is an essential feature which will distinguish a brand, product or service from the competition. It also ensures to protect your business from the competitors.
Looking at the present Indian government policies which are providing various reliefs for MSME’s and recent “Make in India” drive is offering a promising outlook and thus making the role of trademarking very crucial IP asset for MSME.
Trademark serves as a defence mechanism which will protect an MSME’s brand from goodwill, loss of reputation, loyalty, retaining a good, trustworthy relationship with your existing and prospect customers.
A brand which is trademarked has the potential to enhance its value as an intangible asset which is then used as collateral to obtain financing from legitimate financial institutions.
Difference between Trademark v/s Copyright v/s Patents
In general, it is very confusing sometimes to identify the difference between the above three elements. They all offer intellectual property protection; they protect different types of assets.
1.Copyright
Here one will hold the right of his/her original work and can regenerate the work, to distribute the copies, to prepare derivative works to perform the action publicly, and also to display the work publicly.
Examples: All which include Artistic work, videos, books, songs, Music.
The span of protection– Authors years + 70 years more
2.Trademark
Here the phase, logo, word, phrase, symbol or design which identifies and differentiate the source of the services or goods of one party from others.
Examples: Brand name, logo, icon
The span of protection- As long as the symbol is used in commerce
3. Patents
A patent protects inventions, and the goal of the patent law is to encourage innovation and commercialization of technological advances
The span of protection – 20 years
Benefits of Registering a Logo Trademark
- It provides exclusive right to use the logo in connection with goods or services listed in the trademark registration.
- For an organization and its brands, the logo plays a vital role in the identification process, and it must be safe and secured enough in every possible way. If you trade your company with a famous brand logo or name, it must achieve through legally With the trademark registration, or else it may get theft. Hence, it is always recommended to protect your brand name with a trademark.
- Registering the brand logo or name as a Trademark will ensure customers to identify your brand easily and quickly. Hence this way audience can identify your brand as the trademark distinguishes it. People certainly adopt trust in a brand more who has the logo or name trademarked.
- One of the main benefits of trademarks is that it stays forever with us. Few of the famous and reputable brands today have been a hundred years.
Example- A automobile industry “Mercedes” who have got registered itself in the year 1900.
Hence it is a good and safe idea to register your brand logo as a Trademark to sustain for an extended period.
- The Trademark registration will expand the reputation of your brand in the market, it shows your professionalism in your brand image. Trademarks are often known to establish affinity and the trust of target customers in a brand by intruding positive vibes of the brand in a person’s mind.
Also Read: PREMADE LOGO V/S CUSTOM LOGO – Which one best for Indian Businesses?
Exclusive Custom Logo Design is liable for brand trademark
Remember to gain the ownership of anything in life you need to invest honest hours, efforts and creativity same way even custom made logo exclusively hold the capacity of trademarking. The biggest problem with premade logo is that you cannot trademark them you can get them immediately but you cannot own it.
While there are many such premade and standard logo templates which will often meet you visual requirements to be trademarked. But you need to be the sole owner of the image to successfully apply.
When you are purchasing the premade template from a designer through any medium, you were not actually purchasing ownership of the graphic you were simply purchasing a license to utilise it.
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DO NOT TRADEMARK YOUR BRAND LOGO?
Just imagine with so many efforts you have started your business, and then investing money, effort and time you come up with distinct, beautiful and smart brand logo. As your brand becomes more recognizable and your revenue grows, your competition becomes aware of your efforts they try copying you.
After a year or two later, you are blindsided by a lawsuit by the same companies who had copied you but ensured to trademark it.
Here the lawsuit says, that your brand logo design resembles like your competitor’s logo design. The opposing company states that your logo design looks too similar to their own, which is originally what you had designed. Hence, it is leading to customer confusion, loss of brand confidence, and loss of revenue.
You must then pay a massive fine and go back to the drawing board to recreate your brand completely. In this, all process you will lose your loyal customers, and the business now has a tarnished reputation due to local news outlets speaking about your you must now pay a massive fine and go back to start and recreate your brand identity.
Your brand now has a tarnished reputation because perhaps the local news outlets picked up on the story.
CONCLUSION:
To get a trademark, or not to get a trademark, that is the question which always confuses people at initial stages of business.
But if you are planning to expand your business, you are a visionary personality or planning to acquire an international audience in the next few years. Trademarking your logo design should be a top priority.
A logo may seem like beautiful graphic, but to reach at this level, there is a lot of planning goes into them. A logo should be feasible, scalable, responsive, and transferable, which can be stitched, printed in black, white and used on packaging. It should behave substantial recall value just with a glance, minimalistic, clean and free of distraction.
Connect Logo design agency who will consider all these elements when creating a logo for a client. We will help you to get Logo Design as such which you can trademark easily. Our strong processes and research on how a logo will be used and ensure their work is a practical choice that makes us stand out.
Author
Being a strategist’s head and a long term visionary personality aims to achieve excellence in branding, packaging and digital marketing field. My 15 years of design experience and masters degree ais my strength which keeps me motivated and keep me going positively. I have participated in extensive branding design conquests in India, USA, Australia and New Zealand with winning zeal. My objective is to encourage start-ups and hence involves actively in the articles which will act as a productive intake of knowledge for them. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.
