Rhonda Abrams at Gannett News Service:
You’ve picked the perfect name for your new pet food company: Cosmo’s Kitchen. You’ve even invented a cartoon character — an adorable white terrier named Cosmo — to symbolize your brand. Now you’re ready to take over the pet food world.
Not so fast. You need to make sure you can legally use and protect the name. You don’t want to invest money and time building “brand equity” — value associated with the name of your company — just to discover someone else already uses the name “Cosmo’s Kitchen.”
That’s where trademark laws come in. Trademarks protect the rights of owners of a company, keeping others from using their names on similar or competing products or services. Trademarks also protect consumers; by preventing other companies from using the names or marks of others, consumers can be confident of who they’re buying from.
When you apply for a trademark, you indicate what category or categories of products or services you’re going to use it for. You only get protection for the type of use you indicate. For instance, if you’re using “Cosmo’s Kitchen” for pet food, someone else could get the rights to use the name for unrelated products or services, such as a restaurant.
There are limits to what you can trademark. A name has to be “distinctive” and not merely “descriptive.” For instance, you probably couldn’t trademark a name such as “Healthy Dog Food.”
To read more about trademarks. go here.
Photo by zdnet.
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