As I indicated in my tweet earlier today, I learnt a valuable lesson this week in relation to trade marks. Bottom of the line is, you don’t legally own your business name unless you have registered it as a trade mark! Unfortunately I found this out the hard way when I went to register the business name of my pet related startup Find My Pet (now might I add known as ‘Where Pets Are Found’) only to discover someone had recently trade marked the very same name! Oh the pain! After investigating my options, I really had only one realistic solution – to find a new name. So ‘Where Pets Are Found” was born (and all my corporate branding to date was amended to suit – many thanks to limejuice for making the changes so promptly).
So, looking back on this rather painful experience the important thing to note is:
Regardless of whether you have registered your business name with your local State office and/or you have purchased the associated domain names, if you do not trade mark your name ANYONE can simply register the trade mark and effectively take your name and force you to give up your valuable domain names.
For more details in relation to trade marks check out the below links:
[...] it is the first step in the right direction (of a rather unplanned process – see my first Trade Mark post for further details). Next is to pay another fee to IP Australia and submit the application. Oh [...]