Paulo Afonso Pereira - Propriedade Intelectual
How to choose your trademark.
Step by Step
- Make sure in each area would you like to work and the benefits of your business.
- With the help of an specialist, choose at least one name/trademark that better represent your business.
- Look for a qualified partner to do the registration viability research. Attention: a good study takes into account many factors besides a simple study of phonetics and graphic.
- If it is viable send your trademark application for registration at the INPI (National Institute of Intellectual Property) and prepare with a qualified analyst a defense strategy for eventual attacks to your most valuable asset: your trademark.
The trademark is the way the clients relates themselves with products and services that are offered to them. It’s the trademark that comes to the client’s mind when they remember a good or bad service, a delicious or disgusted product.
In that way, how you choose, do or protect your trademark is as much important as to offer good services and good products. Today, will talk specifically about how to choose a trademark; a long process that requires the help of a specialized person.
As you can see on the side box, the first step to choose a trademark is to determine in which area you will work and the benefits of your business or product. The word, expression or symbol that will represent you in the market must be in accordance with such characteristics, respecting what your client already have as a reference from his business, making as clear as possible his position.
“Actually, one of the organization’s biggest problems is the choice of strong trademarks”, says Paulo Afonso Pereira, the PAP’s President and one of the best Brazilian specialists on the subject. “It is a globalize world where every innovation seems to be already done. It is normal to see fragile trademarks that because its generic character not only loose the capacity to reach its main public but also has no guarantees of exclusivity because such trademark can be register by any one interested in using it for another purpose or even for a sick competition”, explain him.
All these options make the choice of a trademark a very delicate process which is easier if it’s done through a specialist. “Many companies believe that it is only necessary to choose a trademark, invest in the logotype and start working; but it can cause many problems and financial loses”, says Maria da Graça Gonçalves Manara, the PAP’s Technical Director, with more than 10 years of experience in trademark’s analysis.
According to her, a behavior like that can take you to dangerous situations like a law suit for using a registered trademark for another company or even to loose your trademark to an unscrupulous competitor that after analyzing the development of your business, registered your trademark just to stop you from using it. “The initial investment in a very good work is essential to the preservation of your future rights”.
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