Trademarks are essential if you are spending time and money to build reputation for your business, as a successful brand name is an extremely powerful marketing tool for your business.

A trademark provides a unique identity for your business and is a valuable piece of intellectual property. It must be distinctive for your type o business and mustn’t mislead the customer is the nature of service / product you provide.

Registering a trademark costs money and time, therefore the process needs to be clearly thought out and convey what your product/service entails to the consumer. The trademark needs to be unique and not currently registered. Once registered you have the right to sue anyone that infringes to trademark.

To register a trade mark in the UK you have to apply to the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) by completing form TM3 online and sending it with the appropriate fee and fee sheet to the UK-IPO Trade Marks Registry.
When applying for a trade mark it's important that you:
•    conduct a search to check nobody has registered or applied for the same or a similar trade mark for the goods or services
•    get your trade mark right first time, as it can't be altered after your application has been submitted
•    list all the goods and services you want your trade mark to cover, as you can't add any later

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