Reasons why the brand should be legally protected
In an increasingly competitive market, players are developing more and more ideas and investing in identifying their products and services.
In practice, however, sometimes excited by the increase in brand value ( etiquette, logo, slogan etc), that identifies the product/service in the market, it is lost sight of the fact that it really becomes a temptation for competitors to take over without right, in whole or in part, the benefits of a ready-made brand, which has already acquired a market value, instead of devoting the effort to creating its own brand.
Therefore, the use of a trademark in a market may become unprofitable if it is not registered with the offices of Intellectual Property (IP) given the fact that, in the event of a conflict with another trademark or other unregistered trademark, the procedures for solving the legal priority are, as a rule, expensive and long-lasting, approximately 3-5 years, the period in which the brand can suffer a decrease of the market value, precisely because their legal situation is uncertain.
Therefore, for new brands, which are created and assigned to a product/service to be launched on the market, it is necessary, first, to do documentary research in order not to conflict with identical or similar brands, and therefore to prevent a possible conflict with an already registered trademark.
Subsequently, after verifications, it will be possible to request the registration of the trademark with protection for the geographical markets where the respective products/services are to be active.
For existing brands in the market that have not yet gone through the trademark registration procedure, it is also useful documentary research of the brand that is intended to be registered as a trademark, to analyze the extent to which the trademark is distinctive from other trademarks from the market, but also to analyze if the brand, in the form already used, possibly even become notorious in the meantime, is not registered by a competitor.
In the current context, in which many businesses are more or less forced to reinvent themselves, modify their products and services or bring new ones to adapt to the current market situation, it becomes even more important to defend their rights regarding brands, on the one hand, because the efforts allocated for the creation of other new products/services ( time, budget, etc) will be consistent and on the other hand, as in less calm moments economically, like the one we are in, the tendency of competitors is greater to infringe intellectual property rights.
A clear proof of the attention given to the legal protection of the trademark is the fact that in 2019 at EUIPO ( European Union Intellectual Property Office), the year in which it celebrated 25 years since its establishment, was registered the trademark application with the number two million.
