Your Intelligence, Your Property, Your Right
Part Three - Trademarks

- Kaustubh J. Javle

Greetings readers and thank you for coming back to read the part three of the ‘Your Intelligence, Your Property, your Right’ series, where I am attempting to inform you with the various types of Intellectual Properties and how you can use them to elevate your business to new plateaus, as well as the legal aspects of the Intellectual Property Rights.

In today’s edition, I will be taking about Trademarks. Now this is a type of Intellectual Property which is most popular and most used in the business field. If one is having big dreams and serious determination to expand their business and take it to the top, one should not underestimate the power of brand value. Every entrepreneur who wants to be in the limelight needs to have a brand of his own. It is sort of an identity for that entrepreneur.

Now, at first we must understand what is a Trademark? And how the legal status is gained by the Trademark for the exclusive use of it by the owner? Let us take an example here, if a man named Sachin decides to open a Bistro and names it as ‘Sachin’s Café’, and accordingly applies it for the registration of the said Trademark before the Government office, will the application be accepted?

The answer is, No. That is because a name as common as Sachin in our country cannot be exclusively be used by one person as a Trademark. There may be a million Sachins out there in our country and if either of them decides to open another café, then that particular Sachin will be at a disadvantage. But if our first Sachin creates a brand something like, ‘Sachyn’s Café’, then his application for claiming that Trademark may be considered.

Now, the example in the above paragraph comes under the category of the ‘wordmark’. It means that the name of the company or the product is itself used as the brand. For example, ‘Google’ is also a wordmark, as it does not have any other specific logo of its own. However, the color sequence of the letters is fixed (G = Blue, o = Red, o = Yellow, g = Blue, l = Green and e = Red) and consistent even though they may change their font styles from time to time. Also, the first G of ‘Google’ is always capital, and the rest of the letters are small letters.

Moving on from wordmarks, we’ll now see what logos are and how logos play a crucial part in the market. Logos are something which denotes a graphical symbol, which can be identified to be associated with the respective company. Here we’ll look into another example, we all have drank or seen ‘Pepsi’ on various occasions in our life. Now, the red and blue colored logo, as both the colors are adjusted into a circle with a little white strip separating both the colors can be recognized by anyone as the ‘Pepsi’ logo. And it exactly serves its purpose. The entrepreneur has to take into consideration all the aspects of the world before he tries to reach his customers. One must understand, with the world being so big and full of different cultures and languages, not everyone will be able to read the English alphabetic letters or any other letters foreign to them. For example, China may be the world’s leading manufacturer, but not many people can read Chinese language or letters outside of China. So they may face problems to connect and communicate with their Non- Chinese customers. And that is a hindrance in the expansion of the business. However with Logos, one can communicate with any person in the world regardless of their spoken language. As the earlier example of the ‘Pepsi’ logo, the said logo is so famous, even an illiterate person can identify the product as ‘Pepsi’. Same goes with the Mercedes Benz motor vehicles, the three pointed lines in a circle logo, or even the bending ‘M’ logo of McDonald’s burgers can be recognized by any child in a city. Such famous logos are considered as ‘well-known marks’, which means, they require no special introduction; these marks are already established Trademarks.

And, as we saw above, this is the power of the brand logos, as they help to reach to a larger number of customers. However, regardless to say, to achieve this sort of popularity of your Trademark, one must also maintain the top quality of their products, and any sort of compromise is not an option. As the customer picks up any such product, the customer shall without any hesitation buy that product, as he trusts the brand, and the customer knows that the product of that particular brand will be of the best quality. If you go to any remote part of the world, and you see a ‘Pepsi’ beverage, you know the product is going to be of the best quality. The taste will the same, the product will be hygienic, and will be of the international standard. Therefore, the customer will always pick up a well-known branded product rather than an unknown branded product.

And along with the success of your Trademark, there must also come the negative parts of it. Fake or cheap imitations of branded products always emerge to sabotage the perfect business. And due to such imitations, the image of the original brand is damaged. Therewill always exist the types of people who will bejust waiting to take undue advantage of your successful Trademark. Such people forge duplicates of your Trademark to sale their products underneath it. And it can be harmful to the image and to the business of the original company.

The registration of the Trademark can be done with the government, and it is highly recommended to register the trademark as soon as possible. After applying for the trademark one can put the letters ‘TM’ at the upper right corner of your Trademark, and after the successful registration, it is to be replaced by ®, denoting that the mark is now registered. It takes around one and a half to two years to complete the registration process of the Trademark. With the registration of the Trademarks, one gains a number of legal rights and the recognition of the government. It is advised to take legal consultation before applying for the registration of the Trademark. You may find more information on Trademarks at the government’s website: http://www.ipindia.nic.in/trade-marks.htm

The author of this article, Shri. Kaustubh J. Javle is a practicing Advocate at Bombay High Court, and is also a Registered Attorney of Trademarks.

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