How To Register A Clothing Brand

Starting up your own clothing line? Here's why you need to trademark it

If you're starting upwards your own article of clothing line, you'll have put hours and hours into designing, creating and branding your products. And equally any experienced article of clothing line entrepreneur volition tell you, it's imperative to consider trademarking your products. From a legal perspective, this is what makes your brand a brand — and also what keeps it safe from copycats.

Information technology can be difficult navigating this procedure though, and so here, nosotros'll take you through how your wear line can benefit from trademarking, and how to register a trademark of your own.

What exactly is trademarking?

In short, a trademark is a sign that distinguishes one company's product or service from some other. Nosotros can hands tell one brand's t-shirt apart from another — fifty-fifty if the garments themselves are quite similar — because the erstwhile volition have a different logo or design to the other. This logo volition typically be trademarked, and gives customers a guarantee of receiving the quality they look from their preferred manufacturer.

You'll besides probable take seen the registered trademark symbol placed alongside trademarks on countless occasions (due east.chiliad. Companies Fabricated Simple®).

That being said, trademarks tin be applied to any of the post-obit:

Words.
Sounds.
Logos.
Colours.
Whatsoever combination of the above.

Equally a fashion line creator, you'll likely be almost interested in trademarking brand names, collection names and logos — and so permit's have a closer look at how your clothing line can benefit from trademarking.

How does a wear brand do good from trademarking?

The key motivation for registering a trademark is to reduce the run a risk of counterfeiters ripping off your designs. If yous become aware that someone is doing this, having the trademark in identify will enable you lot to pursue legal action (and so provide you with trademark protection).

What's more, with a trademark, you'll also be able to put the ® symbol next to your brand, which tells others non to utilize it. Information technology besides makes it possible for yous to sell or license the brand to another party.

Even if y'all don't end up having to settle any legal disputes with counterfeiters, trademarking is probably worth the effort for your peace of mind lone. Once you've registered a trademark, information technology'll be prepare in stone for the next 10 years.

The only existent downsides to trademarking are the fourth dimension and costs involved. Applications ordinarily accept effectually four months to process — and potentially far longer if someone raises an objection. The costs of registering a trademark can as well get off-puttingly high for smaller businesses.

How to register a trademark

If you've already weighed up the pros and cons of registering a trademark and decided to go alee and protect your brand, here'south the info you need to know near the trademark awarding:

Each nation manages trademarking through its own International Holding Office (in the UK, ours is called The Intellectual Property Office of the United kingdom — or UKIPO for short).

You tin complete the trademark registration, renew or manage a UK trademark via their website . Registering a trademark for one product class costs £200, and then an added £fifty for every additional grade you wish to use the trademark to — where product classes refer to the types of production to which trademarks can exist applied. In terms of fashion products, these range from ankle boots and ascots to waistcoats and wetsuits .

Every national International Property Office comes under the umbrella of the Earth Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a United nations agency founded in 1967 "to promote the protection of intellectual property throughout the world".

The simply nations non currently signed up to WIPO are the Federated states of micronesia, Republic of nauru, Palau, the Solomon Islands, South Sudan and Palestine.

In that location are two options for registering an international trademark with WIPO:

Apply via WIPO's Madrid System : with this option, businesses can file a single application and pay one set of fees to apply for protection in the 117 countries covered by the System.
Employ via UKIPO : this option likewise uses the Madrid Organisation, and the same WIPO fees will utilize. You'll besides have to pay a £xl admin fee to UKIPO.

International trademark fees beginning from 653 Swiss francs (that'south equivalent to well-nigh £514 at the time of writing), and then we'd merely advise going down this route if you lot programme on selling enough of garments overseas.

Rules and regulations to acquit in heed

It's of import to remember that you won't necessarily be successful in registering a trademark but considering you've submitted your application — in that location are also various rules and regulations y'all'll need to fulfil. Some of the primal criteria for clothing lines include:

Don't use offensive words or imagery.
Don't mislead customers (e.g. past including the word 'bootleg' in a fast way make proper name.
Don't employ images resembling existing state symbols like flags and hallmarks.

For obvious reasons, it'south also crucial that your trademark is not also similar to any existing ones. You can observe out whether this is the case past completing a trademark search with the UKIPO Merchandise Marker Database (if you're trademarking in the Great britain ) or if you're registering an international trademark, by using WIPO's Global Brand Database .

Enforcing your trademark

Ultimate, responsibility for enforcing a trademark — including identifying infringements and reporting them via a local trading standards service — rests with the trademark owner. Major way companies oft employ specialist intellectual property solicitors to manage their infringement cases, so it'southward of import to be careful.

Is your clothing line ready and ready to go?

Trademarking is but one function of the process fashion entrepreneurs must go through to set every bit a legitimate business. From the registration process for a limited company to getting your accounting in order, we tin can help with the whole process.