Protecting and Developing Your Businesses Identity

When setting up a business, you may have the vision to become an internationally known presence or a lifestyle business, or you might want to simply keep yourself and maybe a few others in employment, earning millions or earning enough, you will spend time and thought on many things that can come to define your business.

● Business name

● Products you might invent

● Products you might buy-in as a white label

● New services

To suggest a few.

BUSINESS NAME

The obvious one is the name of your business.

If it’s your first time setting up a business, it’s sometimes an easy way to use your name. After all, John Lewis, Boots, and the like are doing okay. Joe Malone sold her company and lost the use of her name in the business. Many cases exist where this happens. So perhaps it's not always ideal to use your name.

Unless your name has a cache of followers, on social media, and when getting established set up your accounts in your name. And in turn were very good at building audiences, perhaps through blogging, singing, running commentary on others. In that case, you have a conundrum, changing your social media to be in line with your new business, will you lose that momentum and followers that could be customers.

Do you start selling to them on that feed or account, or do you have to start again?

If you sell to them from your personal account, will you lose them?

Start as if you will be huge one day, is the way to go in my opinion. Although my first business nearly 30 yrs ago was called Daniels Print Finishing.

Everything I’m writing is based on experiences I have had and thoughts that spring from those and learning. None of what I say is legal advice, it’s trying to make you think about things a little more.

LOGO

So when you have set up your company you might start thinking about a logo? If you design it yourself and using the ever-present “I’m going to be big one-day” mindset, you might want to protect it. Trademark the word, as in the name of your business, then trademark the logo itself. Or logos, if it alters as you go on.

If you use a designer to produce a logo or logos for you that’s great. I’d recommend it if you’re not artistic, or able to do it yourself. They will possibly get you to sign a contract. If they don’t then you should get one drawn up for them to sign.

The most important thing to ensure as well as delivery of suitable timely work is that the artwork and design are legally given, passed, into your ownership, so that the copyright will become wholly owned by you. Paying the bill for the work to be done doesn’t make this happen.

I’ll explain this with an example with the mindest “I’m going to be big one day”. Innocent Drinks set up as a small company that grew into a huge one. They then became so big that Coca Cola wanted to buy them out completely after buying chunks over time. They did buy them out but found that the copyright for the logo was owned by the designer. That designer had agreed to produce it in exchange for 2% of Innocent drinks. But they had not passed the copyright to the owners of Innocent.

Unfortunately, the design company had failed and closed its doors before the sale to Coca Cola. Fortunately for the designer they were paid several million, I believe for that copyright ©.

This outlines goodwill in the first instance to work for sweat equity. Shares over cash. But the deal hadn’t been done or completed. The holding of the copyright is or can be very lucrative. When you are paying the bills for an assumed all that is produced. Make sure it is.

PRODUCT NAME

After name and logos come any product names, either white-label or of your own manufacture.

A white label is when you buy a mass-produced product and label it as your own. Also called private labelling. The name of your product, again if it takes off, or is even simply selling well on Amazon can be taken by others if not protected by you. This happens a lot and by those with a lot of information as to your sales and who manufactures it.

Trademark as much as you can, and register the Brand on Amazon and any other online sites you may use. This gives you control, control is power.

Trademarks can be fairly easily bought and applied for by yourself. It will take a few hours or 30 minutes, depending on what you are applying for. Search the name here, https://www.gov.uk/ search-for-trademark this is a government site that is easy to use. It will also not try to upsell you onto other services you possibly don’t need. Take a look and see what you think.

When going through the site you will need to choose Classes in which you want protection. If it’s dog food or mirrors, cleaning materials, financial products or services there is a Class that covers them all. You can simply choose a Class and everything listed in that class.

The issue here is if you don’t use your name in everything listed but others do use those Classes that you don’t use, they can stop your trademark from being registered as yours.

I once had a clashing of uses within a class. The company that put its hand up and said stop what you’re doing during the published phase, was a Gucci owned company. Putting their hand up was a solicitors letter explaining I couldn’t use the name I wanted as they were using part of it themselves. I rang their solicitor and asked about the issue and found out that the clash came about on a few specifics in the particular class. I suggested that I could remove those used by them that I was claiming and put it in writing that I was doing so. Altered my application on the gov site and we both now share a trademarked name. They protect part of my trademarked name for me by an association of those trademarks.

Moral or learning is, it’s better to define your uses as opposed to simply claiming a whole class. Also, ring and speak to any person that is claiming against you. Or use an attorney if you need one. Plenty of help given on the gov site though, patents, design patents among others.

If you are thinking that your product is going to sell across the world and you’d like it protected everywhere. Unless you have tens of thousands of pounds to spare, start somewhere rather than everywhere.

If you are in the U.K. building your business patents aren’t something to be writing or applying for yourself unless you happen to be trained or skilled in the art. It is an art form. When choosing a person to help you with your patent application I would suggest using a Patent Attorney.

Patent attorneys are trained in Patent Law and have passed examinations. They are also regulated, which is very important, this means they have a written and regulated set of costs they must use for each stage of the patent processing. I can vouch for this company if you need one (www.sirius.services) I’ve used them to protect several things in countries around the world. It still cost a lot but I know it’s less than others might have charged me.

Patent agents, Intellectual property attorneys are unregulated and can charge what they wish for each stage. Many a tale of inventors or those trying to get a patent, spending all of their available resources and more across to some unscrupulous types.

Another example from my personal experience to do with a trademark, but it still applies. I had another Application for a set of words. I received a letter stating that a claim had been made against my application. On this occasion, I chose to not go through with the application. I abandoned it. Several months later I had a phone call come into me from a youngish sounding chap who was gleefully telling me how he was glad he had won the case against me, sorry it had meant going to court and cost me money. He wasn’t so happy however when I explained that I had abandoned it, giving my reasons why and that it had never gone anywhere near a court. He had been robbed of a lot of money in costs to his “agent” supposedly fighting against me.

I hope this has been helpful and is based on my experiences or knowledge gained over time. It’s meant to be useful and not scaring you away. Protect all that you can. Even if it’s a struggle if you believe in what you have.

Again I would clarify that none of what I have written is to be taken as legal advice or otherwise. It’s based on my experience and where possible doing things myself.

-        Steven Daniels – Founder for multiple companies since 1993