Register a trademark and protect your business, brand and intellectual property.

Registered your name at Companies House?

Can you trade under it?

It's a common mistake made by many startups, you may have successfully registered your new business name at Companies House but that does not give you the legal right to automatically trade under it, there maybe a business or brand who have registered a trademark with an identical or very similar name to yours, without knowing it you may actually be infringing on their intellectual property rights.

The Companies House and the IPO databases are not connected, that means you should use our renowned search and advice service to check whether or not your name, or a similar name to yours, has been trademarked.

Our report risk assesses the likelihood of opposition from earlier trademark holders to your application, this is step 1 of our trademark registration process and is designed to save you time and money.

Grow. Expand. Protect.

Initiate Search and Advice Report HERE

Trademark FAQs

What is a trademark?

Trademarks are valuable business assets. Local businesses, multinationals, charities and celebrities are all owners of trademarks. A trademark can be any sign that identifies you as the owner of your goods or services to make it clear they belong to you. It is the badge by which customers find your products or services in the marketplace. The owner of a trademark has exclusive use of that sign. Once in use, your trading reputation and goodwill will be attached to your business – making your trademarks some of your most valuable assets. It is a symbol of trust and studies have shown it facilitates customer purchasing decisions which means increased sales.

Word mark v. Figurative mark: which one to choose?

The most popular way of registering a trademark is to apply for a word or figurative mark.

A word mark protects the meaning of the word itself apart from any graphic design and puts the emphasis in the phonetic of the word. In that context, a word mark allows brand owners to prevent others from using an identical or similar name to the protected word mark. Moreover, if a company decides to re-brand, the registered word mark will protect the new logo, without the need to change or register a new trade or service mark.

However, a word mark gives a broader scope of protection for brand owners, so it is not easy to obtain such protection. Indeed, for an application not to be rejected, the word mark must be a word which is distinctive enough, or a word which has acquired secondary meaning. A generic word may prove difficult to register as a trademark, as a brand owner cannot hold an exclusive right to the term.

The other disadvantage of registering a word mark is that if a competitor uses a similar graphic than your brand, but uses different words, which are not phonetically similar to the registered word mark, the company could not prevent the competitor from using it.

In contrast, a figurative mark protects the word in the scope of a graphic design. The emphasis here is put in the visual part of a trade or service mark. In that case, even if two words are phonetically different, if their appearance, through their designs, is similar, there is a high risk of customer confusion. For that reason, brand owners who have figurative marks can prevent others from using identical or similar versions of their marks.

Obtaining protection for a figurative mark is easier than a word mark. The main reason is that the graphic design directly influences the distinctiveness in a figurative mark, as opposed to a word mark, where distinctiveness only results from the word itself. One of the main disadvantages of a figurative mark is in the case of re-branding. When a company re-brands, the registered figurative mark will not protect the new logo of the company.

In addition, when the only distinctive element of a figurative mark is graphic, companies would have difficulty in enforcing their trademark rights, especially if the similarity with a third party’s brand is only based on the phonetic word.

To have full protection of their trademark, brand owners are strongly advised to register both word and figurative marks (if the budget permits, if not then a combined figurative mark is the most cost effective option). When enforcing trademark’s rights in the domain name industry, registering a word mark is indisputably the best and safest option. A domain name can only be composed of word(s) and cannot represent a graphic design. Therefore, owning a registered word mark is the most effective way to fight against cyber-squatting. Yet, a figurative mark can still give brand owners an enforceable right if the distinctiveness of a mark does not exclusively rely on its graphic design.

What makes Trademarks for You™ different from other trademark management and IP firms?

We are trademark registration and intellectual property management professionals and have successfully registered hundreds of trademarks for lots of different businesses and brands, these have included small startups to multi-million pound organisations. Trademark registration and IP management is time consuming, costly and complicated if you don’t have the right skills, knowledge or experience, we are trademark registration and IP process experts who will ultimately save you time and above all else money. Our risk analysis which is included in our step 1 Search & Advice Report, enables you to make an informed decision on whether or not to invest in step 2 which is instructing us to register your trademark application. We save you time and money and are your trusted partner in trademark and IP management, our fees are the most competitive out of all the other trademark and IP firms, just read our Trustpilot reviews.

Do I need to trademark my business and brand?

Yes! All businesses and brands should protect their intellectual property and assets. Trademarking your business name and brand reinforces customers perceptions about you and your business. It means you’re serious and are serious about delivering quality products and services. It also means you can grow and expand knowing that you are not going to be issued with a cease and desist letter by another business because of trademark infringement. Additionally, and not many people know this, trademarks are property, they can be mortgaged, licensed and even sold so are actually a great investment, an Eddie Stobart trademark recently sold for over £10M and we sold a trademark on behalf of one of our customers for £20k which is a great return for £414.

If at any point you want to sell your business one of the first questions you’ll be asked is are you trademarked?