If you haven’t already realised, trademarking is one of our favourite topics here at Jamieson Law.
One question we get pretty often across the board is “does registering your trademark in the UK give you protection elsewhere?”.
For example, would registering your trademark in the UK protect your brand name (or whatever you’re registering) in, say, Ireland too?
That’s a very valid point indeed. Unfortunately for us, the answer is no…so please be aware that having a registered trademark in the UK does not give you protection elsewhere, it ONLY gives you protection in the jurisdiction that you register in.
The next question probably on all your minds after finding this out…”well, what am I meant to do now? Getting different trademarks for different countries in one go can become very costly!”.
One way to go around this is to have a priority list of the countries you have or in the near future are going to be trading in, working up what these costs are and gradually buying up those trademarks over time.
You may be wishing for an easier option, questioning that there MUST be a simpler way to trademark all over the world.
The Madrid Protocol is not quite trademarking all over the world, however going through said protocol when looking to register in multiple countries can be useful. Bear in mind not all countries are signed up – but most are!
The World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) deals with the ‘form’ and sends it to the countries you are looking to register in. You still have to go through the registration in each country, so it is not the ‘whole world’ option, unfortunately, but it can make your life that little bit easier if you want to register in several different countries.
One key thing to remember is to ensure you only protect your business in places where you have a current presence or plan to expand, as you don’t want your mark to be challenged by others for non-usage!
If you need any assistance with trademarking, we’ve linked our pre-recorded trademark masterclass below, which delves deeper into what trademarks are, how they will benefit your brand and protect your brand (this does mostly cover it from a UK perspective, so let us know if you’d like to hear more about registering further afield).
Click here to be watch the masterclass.
If you are multijurisdictional or have any questions, please get in touch.
The Jamieson Law team and I are more than happy to chat with you about which countries you need to register in and what you need to consider in terms of your first priority.
