Six trademark myths that cost businesses money

Every one of these turns up in first conversations, and every one has cost somebody a rebrand.

"My business name is unique, so it is protected"

Registering a company at Companies House, or its national equivalent, gives you the right to exist under that name. It gives you no right to stop anyone else using it.

Two businesses can hold identical company names in different countries, and a company registration will not stop a competitor registering the same word as a trademark and then objecting to your use of it. Uniqueness is not a right. Registration is.

"Registration is expensive and slow"

An EU trademark costs €1,530 all in for one class and covers 27 countries. A UK trademark costs €715. Both register in about four to six months if nobody objects.

Set that against a rebrand: new packaging, new signage, new domain, reprinted materials, and the customers who cannot find you afterwards. The filing is the cheap part.

EU small businesses can also reclaim 75% of the official fee through the EUIPO SME Fund, which brings an EU filing to about €895.

"We are a startup, it can wait"

Waiting is what creates the problem. Trademark rights in the EU go to whoever files first, not to whoever used the name first.

The pattern is familiar: a company builds a name for two years, gets traction, then finds that somebody else has registered it, sometimes a competitor who noticed the traction. At that point the choice is buying the mark, fighting for it, or changing the name.

Filing early also matters at fundraising. An investor doing diligence will ask who owns the brand, and "nobody, formally" is a poor answer.

"A trademark in my home country is enough"

Trademark rights are territorial. A Spanish registration stops nobody in Germany.

If you sell across borders, or plan to, the EU trademark covering all 27 member states is usually better value than a string of national filings. Since Brexit the UK needs its own registration.

"Our social media handles protect the brand"

A handle is an account on somebody else's platform, held on their terms. The platform can suspend it, reassign it, or change the rules.

Handles also give you nothing against a competitor using the same name in trade. It works the other way round: platform brand-protection programmes, including Amazon Brand Registry, generally require a registered trademark before they will act for you.

"We own the domain, so we are covered"

Owning a domain is a rental of one string on one extension. It stops nobody from using that name for their business, and it gives you no rights on any other extension.

The relationship runs in the opposite direction to what people expect. A trademark is what lets you recover a domain: without registered rights, a UDRP complaint fails at the first element.

Domain name versus trademark sets out what each one actually does.

Where to start

Check the name is free before you commit to it. A clearance search costs €358 across the EU and is the cheapest point at which a naming problem can be fixed.