Things Tech Business Needs to Know About Trademarks

With the startup India and the Digital India initiative taking off, India has witnessed the rise of tech startups. This article will help you understand the importance of a strong trademark and how you can choose one that’s strong and helps your business grow.

For every tech business startup, the foremost thing is the acquisition of a strong trademark. A trademark can be defined as the identity of any e-commerce company, which tells it apart from the rest and keeps it protected.

As India renovates into Digital India, the stakes for protecting one’s business are higher than ever. A trademark helps you to not only create a distinctive identity for your business but also to avoid incurring any damages.

This article talks about the basic principles and some must-know things about trademark.

First come - first serve basis

Being the first company in the line to sell a particular set of goods or services can be highly beneficial.

Once the trademark is acquired, all other parties can be halted from creating a trademark akin to yours. The focal reason for obtaining a trademark is to prevent confusion in the market.

Reserving only certain goods and services

The point to be noted here is that the trademark validates only those goods and services which are sold by the company.

Therefore, it is possible for two or more companies to have the same name with a different range of products and services.

The name Dove is associated with a company selling toiletries and cosmetics. However, the same name belongs to a chocolate company. Therefore, a business gets a trademark for its identity, name or logo only in the field of goods and services offered.

Strength of the trademark

There are various categories to divide the trademarks and determine their strength.

A few points to note down are:

• An inherently distinctive trademark comprises of the categories of fancy, suggestive and arbitrary trademarks
• Fancy is one of the strongest trademark categories, signifying only the products and services
• Tissot is a trademark for watches. Suggestive trademark, as the name points to, is indicative of the category of products but requires special understanding
• Cadbury Gems is an example of a chocolate product. Arbitrary marks use common words out of their contextual meaning like Apple identifies a technology brand
• The non-inherent distinctive trademarks are considered to be weak and consist of geographic and descriptive marks. This category of trademark depicts the products on the basis of their identities, like Battery Chargers or geographical description such as Delhi Street Food.

Choosing the right class

Since the trademark applies only to the group of products sold by the company, it is very important to choose the right class for the registration of marks. In India, there is a total of 34 classes for goods and 11 classes for services (You can also explore the complete list trademark classes here). All the classes belong to different categories of product.

Qualities of a good trademark

A trademark should be simple enough to pronounce and spell. Moreover, it should be distinctive enough to remain in the customers’ mind. A short-yet-descriptive trademark is all that is wanted. As the world demands out of the ordinary, a trademark should be exclusive in itself and an advertiser of the business.

A trademark often performs as the sole identity of the business. You can consider it to be a two-edged sword; if it can protect a company, it can also shut-down one. Therefore, it can be concluded that a trademark is the custodian of a trader.