Is Your Brand Ready to Go Global?
Lately, a lot of our clients have been interested in trademarking beyond their home country or where their main market happens to be located. So this leads to the obvious question:
WHERE should you register your trademarks?
Let’s say you are a small business that is based in Boston, but you have clients in Canada, the UK, and France?
The basic answer to this question is that you want to register in the country (or countries) where you have a significant customer base and do marketing.
The point of a registered trademark is to own the name AND to keep others (aka your competition) from using it such that it would confuse your customer base. The chance of that happening comes depending on where you are marketing.
For example, I’m not really worried about someone opening a trademark office in Vienna, Austria called TWIST Law because that’s not where my market is. But if someone wanted to do that as a law firm in the United States or Canada, you can bet I would have an issue!
So if you are in Australia (like a lot of my trademark clients!) but 75% of your clients are in the United States, you want to start with a trademark in the United States.
There are a couple of reasons why starting in the United States is usually a good idea:
It’s one of the most difficult trademark registrations to get AND it takes the longest, but the moment you file your application your legal protection starts and any competing applications that come in to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will not be considered until AFTER yours
Once you have it, you can add on additional countries
The US is a big market, most businesses will have a large customer base here!
Once you file in the U.S. (or at the same time) you likely will want to add Australia and most likely the UK and Canada. I find that many of my clients decide to trademark in these 4 countries for the obvious reason of all being primarily english speaking and there is a lot of marketing crossover. The last thing you want to happen is to have a strong brand in the U.S. but then have a competitor using something similar in your secondary market!
While there is NO broad international trademark protection, you can start to build a global presence and brand protection.
So how to decide? If you are working in lots of places, make a list of where your customers are (head to your email list or google analytics and you can get a good idea!) from most to least and then you will know where to start your trademark journey!
If your brand is ready to go global, reach out to get a custom quote for our international trademarking services.
