In today’s world, customers are inundated with thousands of products daily, with statistics showing that an average American sees between 4,000 to 10,000 ads per day. With so many brands competing for the same customer’s attention, brand symbols, names, and graphics are worth safeguarding.
As a startup, you may take time before your brand gains much reputation. Even so, it is essential to safeguard your trademarks to ensure that even as your brand gains awareness, your audience will get used to associating your brand with the values you intend to have it stand for.
So, What Is A Trademark?
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s definition of a trademark is a phrase, word, design, symbol, or a combination of them that identifies specific goods or services. A simple definition of a trademark would be the physical features of your brand that your customers use to identify your brand and distinguish it from your competitor’s products or services.
For example, when a person sees the swoosh sign on a product, they will most likely associate it with Nike, even if the product doesn’t necessarily have the name Nike. Other outstanding trademarks include MacDonald, Apple, and Coca-Cola.
How Trademarks Impact The Values Of Your Business
As a business, it is essential to have core values that define who you are and what your business stands for. Business values can also be defined as company culture.
As a startup looking to build a reputation with your audience and employees, some of the core values you may want to pay attention to include integrity, accountability, keeping the promise to the customer, and quality.
As a business, you can do a lot to ensure that you uphold these values at the workplace and to your customers, and you may want to ensure that you remain consistent with enhancing customer trust.
If another entity uses your trademarks and gets products similar to yours on the market, they may not only eat into your profits. Instead, such a move can cause a significant blow to its reputation as many customers may not distinguish between your products and counterfeits.
Other Benefits Of Trademarks
There is more to trademarks than enhancing customer confidence. Trademarks are essential in attracting and maintaining top talent in your organization. Most employees want to work in an organization with a good reputation because it helps create the impression of working towards a worthwhile cause.
So, if you do a great job at protecting your trademarks, you will, by default, set your organization up to attract and keep top talent, which further helps enhance quality and consumer confidence.
Trademarks also become critical when seeking funding from a lender. Using your trademarks when applying for a business loan implies professionalism, which could help you qualify for more funding or better interest rates.
Using Trademarks To Protect Your Company Values
One of the most effective ways of safeguarding your brand’s reputation is by registering your trademarks. Until you register your trademark, another company can claim it for its own, which can be a significant setback.
However, you could fight such a claim in court with the help of a lawyer if the trademark is a unique creation and you have copyright ownership of the symbols and design. Registering your trademarks give you exclusive rights to use them.
Besides giving exclusive rights to your trademarks, it ensures that no entity or individual could use or create trademarks that closely resemble yours. Similar trademarks are signs, symbols, or names that can easily be mistaken for yours structurally, visually, phonetically, and in design.
Handling Trademark Infringement
If another entity infringes on your intellectual property by using your trademarks or similar ones, your company’s values, reputation, and profits will be at stake. You can use legal avenues to stop them, which may require contacting a lawyer.
The first step your lawyer will take to stop the infringement would be to initiate a cease and desist correspondence with the infringer. A cease and desist correspondence is initiated by the claimant, and it involves sending a letter informing an infringer of their infringement and demanding they stop the infringement.
If the cease and desist correspondence doesn’t bear the results you hoped for, you can proceed to sue the infringer for the infringement.
Final Words
Your trademarks are among your most essential assets. For some established businesses, trademarks have come to be associated with specific products. Such a level of brand awareness should be the goal of every product or service creator, but it will start with registering your trademarks.
Ella Marcotte
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