TRADEMARK

About Trademark

A trademark is a sign used to identify the goods and services of different merchants. Trademarks can be composed of words (including personal names), signs, design patterns, letters, the shape of goods or their packaging, and any combination of the above signs. Marks that expressed in writing or drawing can be registered as trademarks.

The importance of Trademark

The purpose of Trademark registration is to enable the registered trademark’s owner or user obtain the exclusive right of a trademark. A Registered Trademark will be protected by law in order to prohibit others from using the same or similar trademark on the same or similar goods or services. Otherwise, it may cause confusion to the customers or influence their impression towards the products or services. It may even be possible to pursue others for infringement of their exclusive right to use trademarks to obtain compensation.

Before Application

Before applying to register a trade mark it is necessary to conduct a search in order to ensure that if someone has already registered or has applied to register a same or similar trade mark to the mark you wish to apply to register.

Generally, the Trademark office in each country will proceed substantive examination where search and examination will be conducted. If the trademark is considered to be same or similar to the earlier registered trademark in that country and/or do not meet registration requirement of designated country, the application will be rejected by the Trademark office and cannot be registered.

Once your trademark application has been filed, you will not be able to change your trademark specimen. If you wish to modify the trademark in order to meet the registration requirement, you are required to file a new application.

Therefore, before submitting any trademark application, it is advisable to consider the various possibilities of objections that could be raised against the trademark application and to amend correspondingly.

Trademark Protection

Basic to trademark law, the territoriality principle characterizes trademark rights as owning their legal existence to the sovereign powers of individual nations.

Basically, trademark protection adopts territoriality principle. The legal trademark rights only exist to the sovereign powers of individual nations. Therefore, if you wish to protect your trademark under different jurisdictions, it is necessary to submit your application in each country/ jurisdictions. It is also advisable that Businesses and Corporates should apply their trademark overseas if they want to expand their business, in order to avoid the infringement of trademark against or by a third party.

Classify the goods and services for your trademark application

When you are preparing your trademark application, you will be required to include a list of goods and/or services which you wish your trademark to register with in your application and the class numbers which the goods and/or services fall in according to Nice Classification.

Nice Classification is a system of classifying goods and services for the purpose of registering trademarks established by the Nice Agreement. The system groups products and services into 45 classes (classes 1-34 include goods and classes 35-45 for services). The latest updated version of classification is 11th edition of the Nice Classification was published on 1 January 2020 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

If you wish your trademark to obtain a broader coverage of protection, we are able to provide our professional advice on trademark registration together with detailed descriptions of goods or services.