Posts Tagged: "big mac"

How to Keep Your Trademarks Forever

Trademarks must be continuously used to be enforceable. If you stop using them, they are lost. This also means you should have evidence to prove use of your trademark. If your use is challenged, you will have to prove that you’ve been using your trademark, and you need the correct evidence. This just happened to McDonalds in Europe. Even though they were using the BIG MAC trademark, they didn’t have the correct evidence to prove that they had continuously used that trademark for the previous five years, and they lost their European registration.  A truly shocking result.

Brand Identity: Protecting Against Negative Good Will

from the business perspective when you are building a trademark or trademark portfolio it is really the good will that will define the value of the trademark. But like most things in life there is a double edge sword. There is positive good will and negative good will. Negative good will sounds silly I know, but it relates not to the absence of good will, but negative feelings. So, for example, BP is in the process of developing enormous negative good will as a result of the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico.