So you have started your own business. You have incorporated at Companies House as an LLP or a Limited Company. You have some really good ideas and/or you have produced some original and innovative work and/or you have a unique design of a product that is becoming really popular.
Then one day, you are browsing the world wide web and there is something like your product being sold cheaper and appearing to be of inferior quality and/or there is someone else using a name that appears to be very similar to the one that you have registered at Companies House and is providing a very similar service.
Registering the name of your business at Companies House does not provide proper protection from passing-off.
So you then visit the web site and the rogue business is even using a vulgar rendition of your logo.
Time and again we find clients who were happy with their business, thought 
everything was going well, only to find that they are getting calls from a customer of a competitor who has confused the two businesses and wants the cheaper price or special offer, that you do not provide.
What would you be prepared to pay to protect your business from a competitor, £500, £1000, £5,000?
For a small expense you may be able to protect your business name, or the names of your products or brands, your inventions or your designs or even the things that you write or produce, and this is best done before you start trading or selling.
When goods like yours are being traded by someone else without your permission, or if someone is trading with a name like yours, it becomes much more difficult and expensive to protect if you have not taken sensible precautions before your competitor has had an opportunity to trade on your reputation. In some cases, the competitor might have even registered your name and will throw the burden of proof on you to show that you were trading with the name prior to the registration of the competitor’s trademark.
Intellectual property is something that you have created and which is unique to 
you and/or your business. Sometimes you might be allowed to use someone else’s intellectual property if they give you permission to do so in the form of a licence for which they may reasonably charge a fee for the use. But only in such an instance and with permission should you use someone else’s intellectual property.
To protect your Intellectual property, you should, where possible, seek the protection provided by the government. Once you have registered your intellectual property, you will be in a much better position to protect the same going forward. Please click on the following link for more information;
www.gov.uk/government/organisations/intellectual-property-office
If you have a product or a name or a logo or even a jingle, you can apply for a trademark which will be unique to you. Then, should anyone want to use your trademark, you will be able to provide them with a licence for use, or refuse permission as you wish. A trademark application in the UK usually takes around 4 months from start to finish.
If you want to protect the appearance or shape of a product, and in some instances the unique decoration or colour or series of colours, you can apply for a Registered Design and this process usually takes between four and six weeks.
If you want to protect an invention or medicine, then you will need to apply for a patent and this is a much more difficult process and can take a number of years from the start of the application process.
However, an application for a trademark is likely to cost a few hundred pounds and is a sensible and prudent investment when one considers the potential costs of many thousands of pounds required when making or defending a “passing-off” claim” to protect your brand, your product or the name you have worked so hard to establish in the market.
New changes introduced to copyright law, (some say long overdue), offer further protection for the artist, writer or designer.
The moral is that one should protect yourself before finding you are embroiled in expensive litigation.
Sahota Newcomb Scott are a specialist firm of solicitors in Maidstone that have many years of experience in assisting businesses and individuals protect their Intellectual Property. Whether you require help with an application or you need help preventing an infringement of your intellectual property, we are ready willing and able to assist.