What does trademark protection actually cover?
A trademark protects a name, logo or slogan only for the goods and services you register it for, in the territories where you hold rights: an EU filing covers all 27 member states, a UK filing covers Britain only. It stops competitors using a confusingly similar sign for the same goods, not everyone who might ever use a similar word.
What exactly does a trademark protect?
The sign as registered, for the specific goods and services listed in the application. Trademark classes group those goods and services into 45 categories, and protection only extends as far as the classes you actually filed in.
Two businesses can hold the identical word as a trademark at the same time, legitimately, in different classes. A software company and a clothing brand can both own "Polo" without either infringing the other.
Does it cover other countries automatically?
No. Trademark rights are territorial. An EU trademark covers all 27 member states through one application. A UK trademark is separate, and has been since EU trademarks stopped covering Britain on 1 January 2021. A registration in one does nothing in the other.
If you sell into both markets, you need both filings. If you only sell in Bulgaria, a Bulgarian national filing protects you there for a fraction of the cost of covering the whole EU, though it stops working the moment you expand.
How long does protection last?
Ten years, renewable indefinitely in further ten-year blocks, for as long as you keep paying the renewal fee.
Use matters more than people expect. Five years after registration, anyone you try to enforce the mark against can demand proof that you have actually used it, and a registration you cannot evidence can be cancelled for the goods you never traded in.
What doesn't a trademark protect?
The product itself. A trademark protects the badge, not the thing carrying it: not the shape of a product, its packaging, or its function. That is what a registered design covers instead, and many brands need both.
It also does not stop somebody building an unrelated business under a similar name in a sector you never registered for, and it gives you no rights over a domain name using the mark unless you separately pursue a UDRP complaint against a registrant who took it in bad faith.
How do I check before I file?
Search first. EUIPO and UKIPO will both register a mark that a competitor later successfully opposes or challenges, because neither office refuses an application just because a similar mark already exists. A clearance search is what actually tells you whether a name is safe to build a business on.