Ensuring the protection of your own brandimplies mandatory knowledge of how to register a trademark. A registered trademark has a lot of advantages, first of all for the entrepreneur himself. Further in the article you will learn the features of the registration process of the trademark.
A considerable number of businessmen, despite their profound knowledge of own business, have no idea about why registration of a trademark is necessary, and what are the positive aspects.
1. Protection of the trademark.Your sign nobody will risk stealing, because the illegal exploitation of a foreign brand entails civil and administrative responsibility. In exceptional cases, even a criminal may be provided.
2.Use of the mark in all spheres of activity. The registered trademark has the right to use the designation anywhere: on the product package, in the company's documents, in the field of advertising, and also to create signboards and a domain name on the World Wide Web, which is very beneficial for running your own business, as in the modern world the Internet occupies one of the leading positions.
3. Trust of the target consumer.People who intend to buy your product or use the service of your firm will definitely have a positive impression when they find out that the trademark is registered. This fact is associated with customers with a serious attitude of the company to their work and plans for long-term activity, as well as high quality products.
So, the entrepreneur is in a favorable position, not stingy to register a trademark.
In the Russian Federation, the place whereregistration of trademarks, is Rospatent. To register a trademark yourself, you must apply to the above-mentioned federal service for intellectual property and apply for it. It will be reviewed within 12 months. However, few people deal with such cases directly to Rospatent, because they believe that it is much easier to use the services of private lawyers. Their help consists in the proper drawing up of an application and the collection of the required package of documents. This information will be useful to those who think about how to register a trademark on their own in Russia. A trademark approved in the Russian service is valid only on the territory of the Russian Federation. Those who decide to bring the business to the world level, you need to contact the following organization.
WIPO (or the World Intellectual Property Organizationproperty) is an international service that deals with the registration of trademarks and provides them with protection. All applications are submitted to the bureau of this organization. It is recommended, as in the previous case, to seek assistance from professional legal companies.
Speaking about how to register your trademark in Russia, it is worth noting that in Rospatent, entrepreneurs need to pay 3 fees for the following procedures:
1. Registration of the application.
2. Detailed consideration of it.
3. Registration of a trademark and issue of a certificate.
The approximate total cost will be from 20 000 rubles.
In order to register a sign, you need to bea legal entity. The application is submitted either by the owner of the company or by its representative. In addition, a trusted person or patent attorney can do this. The latter is an expert in the state patent office who has the right to register trademarks and conduct business relating to patents. The attorney must have a state certificate, which confirms his rights.
Regarding the issue, how to registertrademark for IP, then the registration procedure is absolutely analogous to the case with a legal entity. An individual entrepreneur can also file an application himself or entrust the case to a trusted person.
There are several types:
1. Verbal. Is the most common. Includes brand names, branded fonts and slogans.
2. Fine. This view implies only a picture without the use of inscriptions.
3. Mixed. This includes combinations of pictures and letters - logos.
It is important to note that you can register not only the sign, but also its color, as well as the form of product packaging.
Before contacting the Intellectual Property Serviceproperty, it is necessary, actually, to come up with a trademark and check it for uniqueness, in order to avoid accusations of plagiarism. If no similar trademarks were found after the check, you can safely proceed to the registration procedure itself, which is a sequence of steps:
1. Drawing up an application.An application is a package of documents that contains data about a legal entity or an individual entrepreneur and a registered trademark. The required kit includes:
The application must be written on the model of Rospatent.
2.Consideration of an application or its formal examination. Employees of Rospatent accept the application and the package of documents, and then assign a registration number to the application, which is notified to the applicant in case it is necessary to supplement the package of documentation or make any adjustments. Also on this number find an application in an extensive database. Then it is sent to a formal examination, where they verify the correctness of its compilation.
3. Consideration on the merits.This stage is a thorough examination of the trademark for the presence of coincidences with other brands. This process is complicated, as in the whole solution of the issue, how to register a trademark. The brand should not mix with existing brands, so as not to mislead consumers.
4.As a result of consideration of the application, the Intellectual Property Service decides to register the trademark. He is entered into the register and gives out to the applicant a certificate stating that the trademark has been officially registered.
To understand how to register a trademark, you need to know the rules that operate on the territory of the Russian Federation.
It is forbidden to register the mark on physicalindividuals, as opposed to domain names. Here there is a question how to register a name as a trademark. Trademark-names, of course, exist, but the essence of these cases is that they are registered with an individual entrepreneur or company. It follows that you can use your name as a trade mark. One has only to think about how the name or surname will look in the form of a trademark.
Persons intending to launch their own brand, it is necessary to read article 1483 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, which contains a list of signs that are unacceptable to registration.
In addition to the above components of the application, Rospatent requires the submission of the following documents:
1. A receipt confirming that the duty has been paid.
2. In the case of collective designation - the statute of the mark.
3. In the case of filing an application, a patent attorney is a power of attorney with the signature of the head of the company.
In the absence of these materials, there may be misunderstandings during the registration process, so it is extremely important to check the availability of everything necessary.
For comparison, a few words about howto register a trademark outside of Russia. In Germany, the application is considered faster than in the Russian Federation - about 7 months, while in eastern countries, such as India, the examination is carried out for several years.
In Russia and the United States it is forbidden to use strangersbrands for commercial purposes, since misleading entails punishment. In addition, three-dimensional trademarks are recognized in Russia, unlike Japan and the United Kingdom. There protection of signs of this kind is carried out only if they represent industrial designs.
In some countries, the use of the surname as a trademark is prohibited. This is due to the fact that such an action violates the rights of people who carry the same name.
