Authored by: Ashrujit Basu

 

A picture is worth a thousand words and a good logo is worth a million

 

That’s what I believe being an IP Professional from Kolkata, a city which was not too Business savvy or I may say Startup Savvy.

But my perception changed drastically, when I had visited few Startup Events which were being organized in Kolkata, had got opportunities of meeting interesting people with many startup’s which are growing up in the city.

 

Kolkata being aligned with a central point for Eastern India, had so much to offer in the past and still has immense potentiality in terms with its scope of maker scalability. So being a Startup if you are working from Kolkata that means you are already positioned yourself strategically to operate for the Both North East & Assam and States like Bihar and Jharkhand while targeting Pan India.

 

Therefore, a distinct brand identity is required to be placed as a separate entity.

 

Mistaken Facts & Reality about Trademark and Brand Creation:

 

While interacting with startups from my home town Kolkata, I’ve noticed many mistaken and fallacies are there in the mind of Founders or confounders regarding branding and most importantly Trademark. Here, I will try to shade lights on those issues;

 

1. Your Company Name is not your Brand Name: Yes, you can go ahead using your company name as your brand name but that’s won’t be advisable, your company is a parental body and your brands are a visual outlook of your various business activities. Like Nestle is mother body and Maggie is the name of the brand, so when you separate your brand from your parents then you also actually ease the risk which might arrive in future to corrupt the brand name, and by avoiding that you actually save the Motherbody i.e saving your Company from maximum damage due to sabotage of particular Brand’s reputation. So, when Maggie got a bad name due to a noncompliance with Food Safety Regulators, then the Nestle’s brand valuation and image not affected that much and that actually helped Nestle to regain the market share and goodwill back for Maggie and fighting back for its own existence.

 

2. Trademark is not just only name of your Products or Services: Trademark is much more than that, it also includes Slogans, Packaging as Trade dress, captions, sub brands, other name of varieties of the same product, name of flavors and add on etc.

 

3. When you register each one of them as a Registered Trademark with Registrar of Trademark, which actually helps you in marketing, increasing the valuation of your brand.

 

4. Trademark is not a global Right: Trademark application shall be filed with your local Trademark office, and based upon your application a certificate might be granted which is applicable only in India. So, if your business is export or you ship your products to any other countries, you should go ahead and check with those countries specifically for getting a TM in those countries as well, which is now possible directly from your home country  by simply  forwarding application with your local TM office.

 

5. TM is not a onetime process: it’s not just that you file for TM and forget about it completely, it’s a practice that startup’s should adhere for better brand management. Upon grant of Trademark you should follow up with Trademark journals which are published by TM office on periodical manner, for spotting any potential infringement and filling an opposition within statutory time frame about the same.

 

6. Domains are Trademarcable: Domains name are the heart mainly for ecommerce startups, hence it’s mandatory to get it registered as a separate Trademark, that actually helps you further in avoiding Domain name disputes.

 

7. Legal is not just few paper works but Social Media Mentions as well: it’s no more a secret that social media is vital for establishing brand identity, being startup we use social media for brand promotion almost everyday, now that also come with a risk factors, when you sharing and mentioning your Trademarked Images, logos and other promotional stuffs, which is having chance of being copied by someone else while cost of coping is almost zero.

 

8. Therefore, a Legal Discloser about your TM is mandatory, use it in every single copy of digital footprints such as Facebook pages, email Newsletters, banners or hoardings as well.

 

9. Blogging as your IP Assets: Yes, blogging similar to social media activities having equal or more value, all your products related articles, reviews and discussions are regarded as valuable IP and help your Investors to make a wise decision after conducting a proper valuation based on these assets as well. So when cost of blogging is zero then it will be worth protecting it by paying for copyright registration and informing your Readers and Viewers about your Policy on Republication Request. So well drafted User Policy shall be placed as a separate page on the footer of your Blog.

 

10. Acquiring Others’ people IP: Being a Startup it’s important to increase the valuation as much as possible so I’m certainly not advising for unethical means of creating value but a cutthroat legal policy about retaining 100% ownership on your employees or Team mates creations while working with your startup, the same should be well stated in an agreement for obtaining their consent.

 

So eventually, it’s a fact that implementing these guidelines are not that cumbersome as it seems before  but need to have an habit for Brand Protection and Management. If you lose a sight on this issue we might also lose your brand. 

 

 

Copyright Information: All Moral Rights of the Author is reserved along with statutory copyrights on this Article. Hereby, An Non Exclusive License has been granted to TM Solutions Pvt Ltd. for publishing the same with their respective blog/s, with a credit to author and without any major changes in the content, any other republication requests on any other forum other that TM Solutions Pvt Ltd, are subject to prior written approval from the Author.

To protect your brand name contact us @ taxmantra_trademark

____________________________________________________________________________________________________