Trademark pricing and classifications

Trademark pricing and classifications

Trademark pricing and classifications

Is a Trademark Registration Expensive?

A common perception is that registering trademarks, a process which inevitably involves advice from lawyers, is an expensive one. However, this perception is mistaken for a number of reasons.

First, there are many trademark options available to suit a particular business and its needs. For example, a UK-only trademark in a single class could be sufficient for a start up business trading in the UK.

Second, trade marks may often appear expensive when official fees (fees payable to registry offices) are included. For example the official fees paid to the EU registry for Community Trade Marks are 900 Euros. Here it is important to note a CTM registration would cover 27 countries, so in actual fact this represents good value, around 35 Euros per country.

Third, a trademark registration could prove invaluable by maintaining the reputation and goodwill of the business. This investment would otherwise be lost if a change of name was forced by an unintended trademark infringement.

Lastly, if someone else has trade mark rights in the same name you risk having to recall products after the business has already incurred the time and expense in branding and marketing them. Without a trade mark you would need to rely on unregistered rights in your name which are notoriously expensive to enforce. Legal advice on making the correct registration is therefore highly recommended and could save your business money in the future.

What does it mean that Trademarks are registered against Classifications?

The role that trademarks are intended to serve is to allow consumers to properly identify the source of a particular good or service. As it is not very likely that a consumer will mistakenly confuse, for instance, a law firm with a company which produces chemicals, trademarks are registered in one or more of 45 classes which group products considered similar in nature or function (There are 34 classes of goods and 11 classes of services). This leads to a situation where a trade mark name can be owned by number of businesses where their commercial activities are sufficiently different. An example of this would be the trade mark POLO which is owned by VW for cars, Ralph Lauren for clothing and Nestl for sweets.

When registering a trade mark you select the classifications appropriate for your business. The scope of a trade mark is determined by these classifications so it is important to bear in mind what you are currently doing and what you will be doing in the future when deciding on relevant classes. Also once your application is submitted you will not be able to add further classes.

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