So first of all, I'm going to talk about trademarks and why we have trademarks here.
Side Business School has trademark trademarks important to all businesses.
In fact, for some businesses, they're probably the most important things that they have.
What is a trademark? Well, originally, the very simple idea of a trademark was it was an indication of origin.
So if you bought products that you thought were good or you've gone to a shop which provided good service,
etc., you want to be able to go there again.
You also want to be able to tell other people to go there and the business wants you to tell other people to go there too.
So it's an indication of origin.
It's a way of identifying the goods or services you're providing in a way where people can show, can identify where they've come from.
Their most useful trademarks, I would say, to to establish businesses.
If you don't have any reputation at all, a trademark really isn't very valuable because you don't have any customers.
Nobody needs to know where to go. But established businesses find trademarks very, very important.
And even companies which their main business is, is based upon selling things cheaply.
And thus volumes would be perhaps marginal over marginal profits, but very big turnovers.
Perhaps take little or oldie but sell very good products, but sell them very cheaply and that they're not really providing anything new.
And the type of products they're selling, they're selling pretty standard products, but people want to go back.
So even they need to have a trademark such identifies the origin, the goods they're selling.
So what is a trademark?
It's a sign which is capable of being represented graphically and capable of distinguishing goods or services of a particular person.
So that's all they or whatever. You don't have to actually know who they are.
But what you do need to know is that this product comes from this person or this business,
and it's got to be something recognisable or can't be registered as a trademark.
Well, it can't be registered trademark. If it can't be represented in a graphical form, that means you write it down.
But something that's visible and that's just not as limited as you might think because it's possible to have trademarks which are smells.
Which are videos music.
As long as you can describe them in some sort of graphical way, then you can protect it and you're not allowed to register all trademarks.
If there's a mark already on the register with which it conflicts and you're not allowed to have a second one for the registration for the same thing,
unless of course, sure, it's the same proprietor. It's the same applicant.
It's not simply descriptive. So if I'm selling sweets, I can't call them minty or whatever, because it's descriptive of the sweets.
It's got to be something which which actually identifies the product in a way which distinguishes it from other products.
And I can't actually use the shape of the product, the trademark.
And a classic case of that was the Coca Cola bottle.
And Coca Cola tried very hard to register the shape of their bottle as a trademark.
The court said, no, you can't. You're basically trying to get a monopoly in your in your bottle, in your product through the trademark system.
That's not the way you should be doing it. Getting it through the design system, whatever.
And you can't have it. So the Coca-Cola bottle is not a registered trademark.
There's no point having any sort of intellectual property protection unless you can enforce it.
And in the case of trademarks, you have to establish various things.
You have to show that the use of the competitor of which you're complaining was used in the course of trade.
That means they are actually in business. If you're just using it, theoretically, it's not in the course of trade.
It has to be without the consent of the proprietor and it has to be in relation to the goods for which the mark is registered.
So if I have registration for baked beans, that doesn't, on the face of it, cover use of the market in relation to lemonade.
That's just the starting position. There are some other provisions which say, well,
if you use it in relation to similar goods and you may be able to argue that lemonade was similar in some way to another product.
You might also be able to stop people using a similar mark in relation to similar goods, but the more,
the more you get away from the original registration that the more difficult it is to establish your case.
But it's broad protection, so it will protect you from people using marks similar to yours,
and also using marks which are similar to yours on goods which are similar to those which the mark is registered
and you have to register them all in relation to particular goods or services or classes of goods or services.
Just mentioned very briefly there are other trademark registrations which are so famous that almost any use of those marks,
which is detrimental or is unfair, may get you into trouble.
And, you know, I suppose it might be said that.
Oxo we all know about Oxo. Maybe that's that's a very famous trademark.
Apple very new trademark. In some ways, almost any use of that apple symbol on goods of any description probably may get you into trouble,
perhaps giving you just one example of a similar similar mark.
The Coca-Cola Company again sued people in Scotland who were selling a product called Cola Cola.
And you might have thought that that wasn't very similar. But if you're Scottish, you don't say Kabala Cola.
I'm talking about Kabala, which is the creature that lives in Australia. They would they'd probably say Cola, cola.
And when they said Coca Cola they probably said hula.
So the two were very similar, but they weren't similar enough and Coca Cola couldn't stop that.
It's not the end of the world if you can't get a trademark registration.
There is a the law will prevent people from deceiving other people, deceiving customers.
And the course of that business, even if you haven't got a trademark rather straight registration.
If you can show that you've got goodwill is in the sense of an assets in the business, an established business and a reputation.
People know who you are. If you sell fish, they know your shop.
They know your name. Now, if somebody else tries to pretend that they are providing your goods or they're operating your business dishonestly,
then you may be able to stop them. But you have to show you've got a reputation.
You have to show that if you've got a business in the UK and you have to show that customers have been deceived.
A classic example of this was the Jif Lemon case.
I'm sure some of you may be familiar with this. The Jif lemon was actually a little plastic lemon containing lemon juice.
And it was very popular at certain times of the year. There was nothing special about lemon juice.
It was just ordinary lemon juice in a little plastic container that looked like a lemon.
Another company in America came out with a product which looked very similar, not the same shape of lemon, but bigger, but still a plastic lemon.
And the people who owned the Jif product, who called Richard Coleman objected to this product on the market.
They said that it was being used to deceive customers.
And they carried out some market research.
They put the competitors plastic lemons on a shelf in the shop.
And when people picked it up and took it to the checkout, they they asked them what they had bought.
And a large number of them said they had bought a Jif lemon.
So record. And Coleman said these customers are being deceived.
They want you to buy a jif lemon but they bought something else and they didn't realise it.
And the court said that these things are a matter of fact and they should be
allowed to stop people selling goods in a form which deceives the customer.
And it can be quite trivial. And that was a misrepresentation as to the origin of the goods.
But there could also be other types of misrepresentation which could be in relation to quality.
And one example some years ago was that this company called Spalding, which makes sporting goods,
they sold tennis balls and some of them were your work were seconds, they weren't perfect.
So they sold them off cheaply and they were marked as seconds.
However, a shop. Purchase a large quantity of second rate tennis balls.
And sell them as the real thing. Now.
There was no misrepresentation as the origin of the product.
They've all came from Spalding. There's no suggestion otherwise.
But there was a representation that the product was perfect as first class and that people played with it.
Some of them burst or whatever, and it damaged the reputation of Spalding.
So any sort of misrepresentation in the course of business can cause problems.