A trademark is used to identify goods or services of a company. Protective characters are those which are capable of distinguishing goods or services of a company from those of other companies. These can be, for example, words, letters, numbers, pictures, but also colors and sound signs.
Trademark protection results from the entry in the register of the German Patent and Trademark Office. Application must be done before registration. Trademark protection can also arise through traffic validity, that is, through the intensive use of a sign in business dealings or through public awareness.
Not everything can be protected as a trademark. Absolute grounds for refusal are the exclusion criteria for a trademark registration. Excluded from the registration as a trademark are, for example, purely descriptive information, as they should be freely available to anyone for the purpose of describing goods or services. Furthermore, it is not possible to register those signs that would not at first be perceived by the public as a trade mark, ie where the traffic does not assume that it is an indication of the origin of the goods or services of a particular company. One then speaks of a lack of distinctive character.
Relative grounds of protection are older trademarks of third parties. Not all trademark offices check whether there are conflicting pre-registrations, such as the DPMA or EUIPO. In other countries, such as China or the US, the Trademark Office checks this automatically.
It is therefore always recommended to carry out a trademark search. This will avoid you having inconsistencies and additional costs in the trademark application process.
There are a variety of brand types. You can apply for a mark for a word, a graphic or even for a tone sequence. Common are the following brand forms:
Depending on the geographical protection area, different brand forms are available.
If a trademark is registered at the Trademark Office, the trademark protection system regularly lasts ten years. There are only a few countries where this deadline is different. Subsequently, the trademark protection can be extended for an extension fee for (regularly) another 10 years. Thus, the trademark protection is the only property right that never expires if regularly extended.
The goods and services are divided into a total of 45 classes (Nice classes). The classes 01 to 34 contain the goods. Services can be found in classes 35 to 45. However, trademark protection does not automatically extend to the chosen class, but only to the goods or services designated in the class.
The Nizza classification has only significance for the fee calculation at the trademark offices. However, it may be that trademarks registered in different classes also claim similar goods and services.
Another basic principle of trademark protection is the so-called priority. This means that the oldest brand has the best brand protection rights. Therefore, in the run-up to the trademark application, it is necessary to conduct a trademark search in order to identify any existing trademark rights.
