Trade Marks Office Protecting Everyone & Assisting No-One In Business
The Australian Trade Marks Office is the one office in Australia for the registration of Australian trade marks.
Applications are made to the Australian Trade Marks Office, which carries out a number of procedures, the first of which is to take the file application from companies and to do an Examination Report. On examination, they will recommend that the trade mark can go forward for consideration by the Australian Trade Marks Office, or they will respond to the applicant with an adverse outcome suggesting that further evidence must be produced for the trade mark to be considered at a further stage.
The procedure has been automated over the years due to the fact that there were many complaints from businesses about the way in which trade marks were tied to the legal profession and attracted large fees from patent attorneys and those in the legal profession.
During the last five (5) years, we have worked with a number of clients throughout Australia through government programs, seminars, and directly as a result of our consulting activities. At all stages we have advised them to get the relevant trade marks, business registration, and other necessary structural and legal protection in place to enable their business to be a long term proposition, and to enable their business to have control over the intellectual property, which is important for trading and eventual sale, joint venture or other future ownership options.
Recently we have noticed that the Trade Marks Office has taken longer to complete trade mark registrations, which is unfortunate because trade marking is an essential part of business structure, management and intellectual property registration and protection.
In addition, we have noted that every trade mark application we have made recently receives an adverse report, even through many of these trade marks are “stand alone” trade marks and have been used by the trading organisations for many years. As soon as a word like “kitchen”, “home”, “car”, “transport”, or any other word is used in the trade mark registrations, the Trade Marks Office immediately comes back with an adverse report saying that you cannot register the trade mark because it has the word, “kitchen”, “home”, “car”, “innovation”, etc. in it, as you will be restricting the use of the trade mark by other people in the trade.
Quite obviously, most of these statements are ridiculous as the trade mark is connected through branding and other considerations by the company, and is actually used in the business name registration, thereby limiting the market use of the name anyway. In addition, it is very difficult to create a Positioning Statement and branding for the company without actually indicating the industry or market sector in which it operates, and the logical place to put this is in the trading or business name, and trade mark where practical.
The result is that we are now advising our clients to not consider using the usual branding or wording of the actual company name when applying for trade marks, but instead to revert to graphics. Graphics seem to have a better chance of survival through the bureaucratic system without having to resort to expensive legal fees and attorneys to which the current system seems to be returning as a result of the influence of the Trade Marks Office.
This means that if you are considering putting a trade mark in place, and we consider this an essential part of modern business practice and management, you consider putting the trade mark forward as a graphic rather than as a word or business name registration.
What does this entail?
It means that, using graphics packages, we at Competitive Edge, can create the wording in such a way that it has a unique graphic reference. It can be unique in all aspects without interfering with the wording in trade marks so that other industries cannot claim, as the Trade Marks Office claims, that we are limiting their access to branding and trade marking in the market segment or market in which you operate.
CASE STUDY EXAMPLE
For example, if you took a name such as “Modern Gardening” as the trade mark, and you wanted to register with the Trade Marks Office, instead of putting forward the name “Modern Gardening”, you would put forward a graphic. The use of the letter “M” could be exaggerated in a graphic format, and together with the letter “G” at the beginning of “Gardening”, we could create a very effective graphic, block it into a colour, a frame, or put a wave into the name in such a way that with a slight change in fonts, etc. we could create a very attractive brand and trade mark representation. This could also appear with your business registration, on your car, on your building, on signage, letterhead, invoices, etc.
If you have any questions about how to proceed to trade marks, which are becoming very important in a very crowded market, then please give us a call. Or contact us by email.
Of course, if you do wish to proceed with the words of your Business Name Registration, and you believe your trade mark registration should be successful because of long periods of prior use, or because of the uniqueness of the name, we will always put your case forward and assist you with any further representation for examination of the trade mark at the Trade Marks Office, and for eventual registration of your trade marks.
Whatever the situation: trade mark your business and brands!!
