Trademark Your Business Name Before Someone Else Does

A common and expensive misunderstanding: registering a company with the MCA, or booking a domain, does not give you rights over the brand name. Those are different systems. The name is protected by trademark law, and trademark law rewards whoever gets there first with evidence.

Search before you fall in love with the name

The public trademark register is searchable, and so is the MCA name database. Search both before you print signage. A mark that is identical or deceptively similar to an existing one in the same class will be objected to, and you will have spent months finding out. Also search plain internet listings — an unregistered business that has been trading under the name for years can still assert prior use.

Classes decide the scope

Goods and services are divided into forty-five classes. You file in the classes that match what you sell, and protection is broadly limited to those. A restaurant and a software product can hold the same word mark without conflict. Filing in every class “to be safe” is expensive and can be challenged for non-use, so pick deliberately: what you sell now, plus the adjacent class you genuinely expect to enter.

What can and cannot be registered

• Invented words are the strongest — they have no other meaning to defend
• Purely descriptive words are the weakest, because no one can monopolise a description of the goods
• Common surnames, geographic names and laudatory words face objections
• A logo can be filed as a device mark; the word and the logo are separate filings

The timeline, honestly

Filing is quick. Registration is not. After the application comes examination, and quite often an examination report you must reply to. If it clears, the mark is advertised in the trademarks journal, and third parties have a window in which to oppose it. Uncontested, plain cases can still take many months; a contested one takes considerably longer. Registration, once granted, runs for ten years and is renewable.

You can use ™ immediately

From the date of application you may use the ™ symbol. The ® symbol may only be used once the mark is actually registered — using it before that is an offence, and it is a mistake we see on packaging regularly.

What it protects you from

Practically: a competitor adopting a confusingly similar name, a marketplace listing under your brand, a former employee registering the name, and the very awkward situation of being asked to rebrand after you have built recall. It is one of the cheapest pieces of insurance a small business can buy, and its value goes up the longer you trade.

We run the search, advise on classes, file, and handle examination replies. If the search says your preferred name is going to be a fight, we will tell you that before you file rather than after.