4 Steps to Protecting Your Brand from Intellectual Property Theft

It takes years of hard work, consistent quality products/services, and thousands spent in marketing to establish a brand. The ideas you have used to tell your brand story and your intellectual property are uniquely yours. No one else should legally be able to benefit from your reputation.

Unfortunately, protecting your brand from intellectual property theft isn’t always that easy. However, if you follow the advice in this article, you can ensure no one else can use legal loopholes to benefit from your trademarks.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on protecting your brand from intellectual property theft.

Step 1: Use Distinctive, Non-Generic Brand Logos, Signs, and Slogans

Many business owners don’t realize the importance of choosing distinctive trademarks. If you’re a bakery, you can’t name your brand “The Best Bakery” or something generic along those lines. Your brand identity has to be distinctive and different from all the other brands. It should be original and uniquely yours.

If you have a generic brand trademark, you can’t legally disallow others to use it. Other brands should be allowed to claim themselves “the best bakery.” It can’t be a trademark. Even if you get a generic trademark registered for your brand, others can take legal action against you for trademarking something that others should be allowed to use.

According to the UK government’s official site, the most common grounds for objection to trademarks are:

• the trademark is descriptive of the products/services
• it’s generic for those products/services
• it’s non-distinctive, and other brands should be able to use it

Step 2: Register Your Trade Marks

When you’re done with the most critical part of protecting your brand, it’s all simple procedures from here. Get your brand name, logos, slogans, and all your trademarks registered. Registering everything distinctive about your brand is the best way to ensure no one else can use it.

The legal system is designed to minimize the risk of intellectual theft. In general, most of the distinct elements of your brand that can be used to make money off of your reputation can be trademarked.

Step 3: Get Domain for Your Brand

Registering your brand name and your slogans doesn’t directly entitle you to a corresponding domain name on the internet. If someone other than Unilever had bought the domain name unilever.co.uk, they could do whatever they wanted with the website except using Unilever’s registered trademarks.

Get a domain name for your brand name so no one else can claim it.

Step 4: Get Professional Legal Help

Business law is complex, and only a professional can protect your intellectual property from all possible legal standpoints.

This is where we come in. At Wembley Solicitors, we offer expert legal advice for businesses on various matters, including protecting your brand through IP laws. We’re also a leading advisor for cases of property-related insolvency in Middlesex, UK.

Want to keep you protected against all kinds of intellectual property thefts? Get in touch now!