Posts Tagged: "branding"

From a legal standpoint, a trademark that has no relation to the product or services offered will be the strongest type of mark. For example, trademarks such as “Google” for a search engine, “eBay” for online auctions and “Bose” for audio equipment make excellent and strong trademarks. Descriptive marks provide less trademark protection because if a term is descriptive it can be used by anyone else selling the same goods or providing the same services… Many sales and marketing people will gravitate toward descriptive marks for products and services hoping that potential customers will immediately identify the product or service being offered. This approach leads to a weak or sometimes even unprotectable trademarks.

Virtual reality and augmented reality are catching on, and the fashion industry has taken notice. Many of today’s fashion brands are seeing their work being used in this disruptive technology. But, this has caused trademark issues for both fashion companies that want to protect their brands and fashion technology companies that want to bring those brands into the virtual reality world. Moira Lion and Jeff Greene, with the Intellectual Property Group at Fenwick & West, recently sat down with IPWatchdog to discuss how to approach VR innovations as they develop brand protection.

Twitter®, Instagram®, Facebook®, Pinterest® and other social media websites and apps are great avenues for advertising and promotion of one’s business and brand. However, in using social media to promote one’s business, there are a number of pitfalls that one must avoid. Using social media in relation to a business is not the same as using social media for personal, non-commercial use… The issues with using someone else’s copyrights, right of publicity and trademark in social media to promote a business is that the business is arguably profiting off of someone else’s property that does not belong to them. That can and does create a significant amount of conflict. Profiting from another’s property is what separates the use of social media in business from just personal use.

Over the years, more and more companies have begun using Mascots (Characters and Personalities), some of which are real people, in addition to logos and company names to identify their brands. And given that there are so many different kinds of companies using Mascots, Characters, and Personalities, I’ve decided it would be fun to do a series on Brand Mascots that have become very popular and well known over the years starting with some of the best and ending with some of the creepiest (in my opinion) restaurant Mascots… One of my favorite Brand Mascots, not to mention highly clever campaigns of all time, is that of the Chick-fil-A Eat Mor Chikin®” Holstein Cows.

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have provided the opportunity for brands to interact with mass audiences quickly and effectively, but this interaction is a two-way street. Increasingly the public is looking to social media as a vehicle to interact with brands when something goes wrong. Trademark professionals are having to consider not only which social platforms to deploy for their brands, but also work with marketing, communications and customer service teams to manage their brand’s presence online. Thinking of social media as “free” for those actively managing and promoting brands misses both the importance of the platform and the expectations of consumers in an increasingly connected world.

Mark Lopreiato, the inventor of the Forearm Forklift, recorded sales of $4 million in 2008 but since then has seen a 30% drop, which he attributes to cheap replicas available on eBay and Amazon. In point of fact, there have been a number of examples of innovative companies suffering from the sale of replicas on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. In extreme cases, global brands like Birkenstock have stopped business with Amazon and other e-commerce retailers altogether. Sustained pressure on e-commerce sites from both professional and governmental bodies have yielded some results in recent years, with almost every major site now offering some level of IP protection tool or process. This also serves the interest of bigger sites as Amazon, eBay and their Chinese counterpart Alibaba are shielded from legal liability, provided they can offer a timely takedown service for IP owners.

The idea of brand value is evolving. Trademark lawyers must be concerned with everything that contributes to the protection of a brand, not just its trademarks. Protecting a brand now includes a number of issues that were simply not relevant to the role twenty years ago, such as: trademarks in domain names; the use of trademarks online; trademarks used in social media handles; and trademarks being mentioned in general online commentary.

We understand governments have a responsibility to protect the health of their citizens and therefore, should regulate harmful products. However, there is no compelling evidence that restricting the use of brands will improve public health… The standardized packaging of tobacco products also sets a dangerous precedent for other goods and services, including alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, snack foods, fast foods and even baby formula, a number of which are already being targeted with severe packaging restrictions, including tobacco style plain packaging.

The top two spots on the list of the 100 most valuable brands are occupied this year, as last year, by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), respectively. These two companies have held their respective spots since 2013, when both were able to ouster The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO) from the leading position in the Interbrand study, which it had held since Interbrand began releasing the report in 2000. Interbrand’s top 10 global brands include a collection of Companies We Follow often here on IPWatchdog, including 4th-placed Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), 5th-placed IBM (NYSE:IBM), 7th-placed Samsung Electronics Co. (KRX:005930), 8th-placed General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) and 10th-placed Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).

We’ve all been there. The Marketing team comes up with a shortlist of branding ideas for the latest product or service – and at the top of the list is a brand which is descriptive. As trade mark lawyers, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs properly if we didn’t explain that the descriptive brand will be more difficult to register as a trade mark than a made-up, distinctive name (in the UK anyway). Plus, it’ll be harder to enforce. However, the appeal of a descriptive brand (simple and clear) can’t be denied, especially with internet searching and online sales now so important. In this post, we’ll take a look at a few obstacles to enforcing a descriptive brand in the UK and Europe, and how to overcome them.

A North American fondue restaurant franchise found out just how essential terminology management can be when it expanded into Mexico in 2010. A translation service provider previously translated its kitchen training materials into Spanish, specifically for the restaurant’s Spanish-speaking employees in the United States who originally came from various Latin American countries. Company executives thought the Spanish they were currently using would be sufficient for the menu and other materials to be used in Mexico. When the Mexican franchise owners visited the company’s U.S. headquarters, it quickly became clear that one dialect of Spanish is not always the same as another. Different countries have their own dialect with words and phrases unique to each culture.