What happens if somebody copies my brand name? Here's a play-by-play on what happens when a client comes to us with this issue that absolutely no one wants to deal with. My first question is going to be, is your trademark registered? Because that answer really changes everything. If it is, then we have plenty of options. We can look at sending a cease and desist, we can look at the platform that it's on, potential reporting, and even depending on the situation and how bad it gets, we can pursue damages. If you don't have it registered, that's not the ideal situation, but it doesn't mean that we're completely out of options. The options just aren't as good as if you have the registration. Then we're looking at things that you're going to have to dig up and I'm potentially going to have to spend way more time and you're going to have to spend more money. Invoices, website information, old emails, old marketing. We're going to have to prove how long you've been using the name and we're going to have to build a common law argument. It's not nothing, but it's much more difficult and slower to enforce. The second thing I'm looking at is how close is close to your name. It doesn't even have to be exactly the same. The other brand name can just be close enough that it might confuse a consumer into thinking that your brand is also their brand or somehow connected. Most of the time we can figure out our next steps pretty quickly, but I will tell you that the clients that have the most options moving forward are usually the ones that do have a trademark registration. Don't wait for the problem to come up to finally care about the protection.
