A trademark is a certification system that ensures no one else uses your brand for their own use.

This can be applied to anything such as your logo, your business name or the name of a product you offer.

The short answer is yes. If you have created any kind of business one of the first things you should think of is registering a trademark.

Having a trademark will stop another business from misleading your customers or using your brand without your permission.

If Nike didn’t have a trademark, how would we distinguish their product from a product simply pretending to be Nike?

A UK trademark can take 4-6 months to register if your application is accepted. If it is rejected, you will need to allow for extra time to appeal the rejection.

An international trademark can take anywhere up to 2 years to register. This is because a different system is in place to file a trademark in the EU and other countries.

We charge approximately £1,500 plus VAT to register one UK trademark plus application fees.

In the UK the application fee for a single trademark costs £170, this includes one class. It will cost you an additional £50 for each additional class you chose to register your trademark in.

International fees are varied depending on the country.

If your trademark application is rejected, this means you will need to appeal the decision if you are planning to proceed with the same trademark. This normally involves the preparation of the ‘grounds of appeal’ and providing supporting evidence of the validity of your trademark.

Note: this is different from your trademark being opposed.

Once your trademark has been published in the Trademarks Journal, there will be an opposition period allowing other trademark owners to oppose your application. If you receive a notice of threatened opposition, this is often because someone thinks your trademark is too similar to theirs.

When this happens there will be a cooling-off period to allow you to come to an agreement with the opposing party regarding the trademark.

If you aren’t able to come to an agreement regarding your application, then the opposing party will be able to file the opposition and it is up to the Intellectual Property Office to reject or accept your application.

Trademark classes are relevant to categorise the service you are providing in relation to your trademark. This is relevant because it will stop someone from opposing your trademark with similar attributes even though they are in a totally different industry and unlikely to cause confusion between customers.

When preparing your trademark application, you must assign a class to the trademark in addition to a description of the service or goods you provide.

Your trademark can consist of as many classes as necessary.

You can either have a 'word' mark or a 'logo' mark.

For example, Nike will have 'NIKE' registered as a word mark and have the Nike tick registered as a logo mark.

You are also able to register for a combination of the two.

Trademarks protect a brand or a certain part of a brand.

Patents protect inventions and ideas.

Copyright protects original material, such as writing.

You can apply for a patent or a trademark but you cannot apply for copyright protection. If you create original material, it is already assumed to be copyrighted.

It is best to apply for a trademark in any country that your business operates in. For example, if you have a British company that sells products in North America, you should apply for a trademark in the UK and America.

The worldwide system allows you to co-ordinate trademark registrations in almost 200 countries.