What happens if someone copies my brand name?
Taylor Tieman's Answer
Business Lawlos angeles, USA11 years experience
Taylor Tieman's Answer
Below is an AI-generated transcript of the video answer.
What happens if somebody copies my brand name? Here's a play-by-play on what actually 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.
Business Law Lawyer
los angeles, USA
