Have you future proofed your business -Ellis trademarks

• 0:00-Introduction
• 2:22-Importance of Trademarking
• 4:42-Common Pitfalls and Confusions
• 7:26-Steps to Trademarking
• 18:24-Legal Implications of Not Trademarking
• 20:57-Top Tips for Trademarking
• 24:25-How to Get in Touch
• 25:23-Final Thoughts

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: Welcome to the Tweet Your Business podcast.

[00:00:03] Ellis Sweetenham: Hello, thank you for having me.

[00:00:04] Katie Bell: You are so welcome. Okay, Ellis, let’s dive in because this area, this topic, is something that we haven’t talked about before on the podcast, and I think it might be something that really gets people’s attention because it’s something in our industry I don’t think we think about enough.

[00:00:19] Katie Bell: It’s something that we just think is going to all be fine and we’ll just ignore it and we don’t really think that we are worthy enough of having something trademarked because who would want to copy what we do? But the people that we work with, they are running bigger and bigger clinics, they are being more and more visible and that comes with some risk, doesn’t it?

[00:00:39] Katie Bell: Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of those things that I think no matter what industry you’re in, it’s easy to push it down that list of priorities. Everyone wants your time. Everyone wants your money. So yeah, it’s definitely something we see quite regularly that people aren’t making it a priority, but it’s really important that as your business grows, you are protecting what you’re working hard for.

[00:01:01] Katie Bell: And that’s so interesting, is it? Because we just think I own the business. Or what could possibly go wrong. So can you give me an example, Alice, of when people don’t think about this stuff, when they don’t protect something in their business that needs protecting, what can happen?

[00:01:19] Ellis Sweetenham: It’s, yeah, it is an interesting one, especially now where we’re in a very digital world.

[00:01:25] Ellis Sweetenham: It’s easy for consumers to be confused between brands. So You work hard for a long time. You build this brand that’s recognizable to your customers. People know you as having a great reputation, quality services, quality goods. Someone comes along with a very similar name, logo, product name service name that is very similar to what you do in the same or similar goods and services and your consumers are just pushed elsewhere and that can have a real damaging effect.

[00:01:58] Ellis Sweetenham: Not only if they’re confused and they’ve gone off elsewhere and no longer giving you your custom, but you don’t have controllers to the quality of what this other business is providing. So it can have a negative impact on your reputation as well as that customer flow that’s coming into the business.

[00:02:19] Ellis Sweetenham: Wow.

[00:02:19] Katie Bell: Okay. So this could be really relevant for, we always think in our industry, Oh, there’s so many physios out there. There’s so many sports therapists out there and all doing basically similar things to what I’m doing. And so is that where we run the risk is that somebody else could, you could have worked like we have a really strong brand within our physio clinic.

[00:02:40] Katie Bell: And somebody else could just set up something very similar and customers can get confused. And then they think that’s me, but they end up there. And so that’s what you’re talking about.

[00:02:49] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously everyone works really hard to make you and make your business unique. And it’s important that your brand then reflects that.

[00:03:00] Ellis Sweetenham: So customers come to you. For what you are good at, rather than getting confused elsewhere and potentially going elsewhere when they intended to come to you in the first place. Okay, so

[00:03:12] Katie Bell: we’ve just gone through this whole process, haven’t we, Ellis, in Dread? And I have to say you’re, you are the most loveliest person, but your emails fill me with dread when I see your name.

[00:03:22] Katie Bell: I’m like,

[00:03:22] Ellis Sweetenham: oh

[00:03:22] Katie Bell: my god, is this going to be the news? That I can’t trade under this name anymore, and I can’t have this anymore, and so we’ve been protecting some of our titles, haven’t we, in Our names within Thrive. And for this very reason, that we are very visible now, we have a big awareness within the industry, and we want to protect Some the name and we want to protect some of the things that we’ve got within the business.

[00:03:46] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah,

[00:03:46] Katie Bell: absolutely. What examples would this be relevant for with a physioclinic owner, for example?

[00:03:53] Ellis Sweetenham: So really you want to think about those elements of your business that consumers will recognize you by. So whether that’s your brand name, Do you have any logo or imagery that you use alongside on your marketing?

[00:04:07] Ellis Sweetenham: Do you have a specific product or service that you offer that has a very strong sort of brand to that? Slogans, that sort of thing. It’s really your brand identifiers is what we’re protecting with trademarks.

[00:04:22] Katie Bell: And how big would a clinic need to be to really think that I’ve got to start thinking about this now?

[00:04:29] Ellis Sweetenham: It is that sort of age old chicken and egg problem. Do you get it trademarked before you even know whether the business comes off the ground or do you wait? I am of the school of thought that the sooner the better. It’s very A

[00:04:43] Ellis Sweetenham: more

[00:04:43] Ellis Sweetenham: straightforward process to protect the brand while everything is good, then try and fix the problem afterwards.

[00:04:52] Ellis Sweetenham: It’s much better of a preventative step rather than a sort of reactive step as to issues that happen. I would say, As soon as really, it doesn’t really matter how big you are, as long as you’ve got the resources to do it and in the UK, you’re looking at around 500 to have someone like the trademark crew file that for you.

[00:05:13] Ellis Sweetenham: Get it done, get that box ticked, get that, I always call it a bubble of protection around you. Then you know that as you are building that business and building your reputation, your brand is secure.

[00:05:25] Katie Bell: Yeah, that’s really helpful information. And actually one of our somebody that we know recently had their business name, they’d been trading under that name, and then they got a letter through the post that was like, you are using our name and we’ve got this trademarked, and they have had to go through this really stressful process.

[00:05:42] Ellis Sweetenham: And

[00:05:42] Katie Bell: That’s what can happen.

[00:05:43] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, and it is interesting to look at the patterns of it. Not a lot of people try and take action against a brand that isn’t successful. So there is a time period in which earlier trademark owners can think about what they want to do, and normally you see it, As the, that business becomes more and more successful, it becomes more and more of a risk of confusion.

[00:06:09] Ellis Sweetenham: That’s when sort of legal action is then taken.

[00:06:13] Katie Bell: Okay, so if you had a, if you were a physioclinic owner and you had a method, So lots of our clients might have a specific way of working with them that we’ve termed a method for want of a better word or a system or a process. That’s something that you would want to trademark.

[00:06:30] Ellis Sweetenham: The branding and the name of it. So the method itself. Isn’t protected with a trademark depending on how that method is recorded, there may be other areas of intellectual property we can look at, confidential information, copyright, that side of things, but the branding and the name or imagery that relates to that method is what you’re protecting with a trademark.

[00:06:53] Ellis Sweetenham: What will a consumer see When it’s being sold to them in terms of its marketing, where, how would they identify it? That’s the key for a broker. Oh, okay.

[00:07:04] Katie Bell: So it’s more of the branding of the actual method that you’re protecting, not the method itself.

[00:07:09] Ellis Sweetenham: It is, yeah. When we file a trademark, we file it in relation to goods and services.

[00:07:14] Ellis Sweetenham: So as part of the application, as part of the protection, you are protecting that brand in a specific industry, goods or services. So you are making reference to that method and the area, so the physiotherapy side of things would be referenced within that. But what you are protecting is the brand.

[00:07:36] Katie Bell: And how do you, if you were setting up your own company or you’ve, and you’ve got this name and what, how, what, how do you find out if somebody else has got that trademark against that particular brand name, for example?

[00:07:52] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, that’s, it’s a perfect question. Cause that’s the sort of the biggest thing that people potentially miss out is that step of checking to make sure that everything is okay.

[00:08:03] Ellis Sweetenham: So there’s two sides of it, really. First thing we need to check is the trademark itself can be a trademark. There is a number of criteria that it must comply with. Not everything can be registered as a trademark. So that’s the first box to tick. And that second box is like you say, looking to see what else is out there, whether there’s any conflicts there in either identical or similar goods and services.

[00:08:27] Ellis Sweetenham: And that can be done through a search. So we offer. A couple of search options where we essentially do that for you, analyze the results and give you a level of risk. But a lot of the intellectual property offices registers are visible online. So the UK intellectual property office is the government body that manages and deals with trademark applications in the UK.

[00:08:50] Ellis Sweetenham: Their register is actually online and does have a public search. But it can be a lot. It can be a bit tricky to extract all of the data that you need. So that’s why we have the options available to essentially do that all for you. We then highlight the ones that are of particular concern and then you can take a viewer’s to the risk and then go from there.

[00:09:11] Katie Bell: And so we did this, didn’t we in Thrive? We use you guys and you did all of this research for us. You then gave me a report back of, so based on the, what you want to trademark, this is your risk level. Now, if that comes back as like high, medium, low, for example, or red, amber, green, the green is classes like low risk that we think that if we were to apply for this trademark, there is a high chance that you would get it.

[00:09:35] Katie Bell: Yeah, exactly that. Okay. And then if it comes back as amber or red. That’s, because some of ours did, we didn’t necessarily then go, okay, we can’t do anything. We still made the decision to go for it.

[00:09:48] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, absolutely. So when we produce that report, we also then have a conversation, either via email or phone, to just determine exactly what that risk is, whether there’s any steps we can take to lower that risk.

[00:10:02] Ellis Sweetenham: For example, thinking about logos or anything like that, amending the goods and services and then go for it. There are some searches that come back and it’s an absolute no go, don’t do it, don’t do it, you won’t get anywhere. But there’s some that Actually, when we’re doing the search, we need to make sure that we’re giving you the worst case scenario.

[00:10:26] Ellis Sweetenham: But you rely on other people’s positions and where they are and whether they want to take any action. There is always the chance that the application can go through and actually everything can be successful. We just try our best to make that as the greater chance of success as possible if we can.

[00:10:45] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, sure.

[00:10:46] Katie Bell: If our clinic coders are, we’ve got lots of clients who name their business either their own initials or their name like in my case, in my other business and lots of ours are, have got initials against them. And would they they may be thinking in their head it’s my name, so why do I need to protect that brand?

[00:11:04] Katie Bell: What would your response there be?

[00:11:06] Ellis Sweetenham: So There is numerous when you think about brands around the world of people’s names and it’s a twofold really. So depending on how unique your name is, there is a chance that someone else will have the same name in a similar industry. So protecting that as a trademark will help there, but also it’s very good for sort of future thinking.

[00:11:28] Ellis Sweetenham: If you’re thinking of franchising your business, if you’re thinking of selling your business, by having that brand protected, You can sell that on to someone else and actually that brand can live on and on. Karen Millen, Jo Malone, they all started their business with their name and they’ve sold it on years ago and made lots of money.

[00:11:47] Ellis Sweetenham: Sometimes it’s not always about protecting your brand to protect it from others. That’s a large portion of it. But it’s also that future thinking business mind of how am I going to scale this business in the future? Do I want to sell it and having a trademark is really important part of that package.

[00:12:08] Katie Bell: Yeah, that’s something that I Definitely. I haven’t given enough thought to, and I think we are in the business of growing and scaling clinics and transforming clinics and business owners in terms of their confidence in the way they run their business. And a part of that is their exit plan.

[00:12:27] Katie Bell: Like where, what, how are we going to do this for? What are we trying to create here? And a lot of them who are potentially looking for a sale, this is a really important part of it, isn’t it?

[00:12:38] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, absolutely. It’s something that any sort of potential buyer will look at. What am I buying? What sort of recognition with consumers do I have?

[00:12:49] Ellis Sweetenham: And as part of that, they want to know that the brand they are buying is protected, is secure, and they can build off that reputation that you’ve already built moving forward. Yeah, okay.

[00:13:02] Katie Bell: Um, what’s, if people are listening to this thinking, okay I’m only a really small clinic and it’s, named after me and I’m just in a little village and, Lancashire, for example.

[00:13:13] Katie Bell: Do I need to think about this right now? What’s your

[00:13:17] Ellis Sweetenham: answer to that? I would say yes, and I think people would expect me to say yes anyway, but I think it’s important to know that you don’t know what the future holds. Everyone works really hard within their business. So of course, they’re going to work hard to build it So even if you can’t necessarily visualize that at the moment get it done get it in Tick box, you know that you’re safe Especially because you don’t know what’s coming around the corner in terms of anyone else that’s tries to then impact you And you know that you’ve got it and you know If your business does grow from there and as you develop, a lot of the time these things can happen very quickly, so you know that it’s in there.

[00:13:57] Ellis Sweetenham: A UK trademark application is the quickest and that takes three to four months, so get it done while you’ve got the time, there’s no rush, and then you know that you’re secure. And I guess,

[00:14:09] Katie Bell: If people don’t do this and somebody else then sets up a business with either a very similar branding or a very similar name or the same name to them within the same industry, service, What could then happen if somebody else comes along who’s got that

[00:14:27] Ellis Sweetenham: trademark?

[00:14:28] Ellis Sweetenham: A few things. Yeah, it can, it then becomes a bit more of a time sensitive problem that then needs to be dealt with. So you’ve got the risk that, They’re going to come along with a business that’s very similar to yours. Those consumers are going to go elsewhere and that dwindles your sort of growth.

[00:14:46] Ellis Sweetenham: They could have issues with their quality that then impacts your reputation. You then get into sort of the more contentious side of things. So that’s when like me, for example, would put my solicitor hat on and look at how do we resolve this dispute really? How do we stop someone else from using the brand.

[00:15:07] Ellis Sweetenham: There are ways of preventing people from using a brand that is unregistered. You do build unregistered rights in the UK, but it’s very much a complicated evidence based sort of process. Very costly, very time consuming and essentially, normally, it’s just hassle people don’t need. By having that protection in place, it minimizes the stress and the faff of having to then collate all of that evidence to take action against someone.

[00:15:38] Katie Bell: And then, you’re going to have to then have a solicitor that’s going to have to help you do that, which is, like you said, really tight, like timely, costly, when you could have just got it trademarks in the first place, and that would have protected you from all of that.

[00:15:50] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah, exactly that. So having the trademark in place normally acts as a deterrent.

[00:15:56] Ellis Sweetenham: You have that on your website, your marketing, you have the little R symbol that goes with it, and if people are doing their research properly, they come across you, they’ve looked at the register, they then go elsewhere. You do find those people that don’t do the research properly, but having that trademark in place is a really good weapon of taking action against them.

[00:16:16] Ellis Sweetenham: You have something that proves you own it without Having to do any work on that really and then you can go on the front foot and say I’ve got This trademark. This is what you’re doing. This is what the law is. Please stop

[00:16:31] Katie Bell: Yeah, and but worst case scenario here like you Somebody else sets up and they are in a similar industry to you and it’s a, obviously that is not gonna work well if you’ve got two business names of the same.

[00:16:45] Katie Bell: Like you said before, they could think they’re coming to you, get confused and be with somebody else, or all of that stuff goes on. That other person then could force you, could they, if they win this argument, to change your business name. Which would then mean that you’ve got to change your banking, your everything then has to change.

[00:17:05] Katie Bell: Is that what could happen?

[00:17:07] Ellis Sweetenham: Yes, so the ultimate rule is whoever came first has the earlier rights to use that name. So it’s a bit of a queue. Whoever’s first in the queue then has the right to use it. So if you come second in that queue, and someone else before you has their trademark registers or They’ve got unregistered rights that predate you, then you could, like you say, that the company that you’re aware of be well down the line and have to change everything.

[00:17:37] Ellis Sweetenham: On the flip side, if you’ve protected your brand then those that come after you, as long as they have come after you both registered and unregistered, which is another reason really to get the trademark in as early as possible, they’re already after you in that queue, so they would need to pull some evidence to say that they came before you, or that they have some level of use or recognition under that brand before you, in order to then impact you later on.

[00:18:12] Ellis Sweetenham: Which just sounds

[00:18:13] Katie Bell: like you’ve so timely, so much paperwork. So much stress, and that ultimately stops you from actually doing the stuff you want to do in your business.

[00:18:22] Ellis Sweetenham: Exactly that. That’s why it’s more of a sort of preventative measure, because by having the trademark, half of the battle is already won for you.

[00:18:31] Ellis Sweetenham: You’ve got something that clearly says, this is mine, we own it, and it makes the process a more smoother. But yeah, no one, it made me laugh when he said about receiving emails from me. I’ve become very used to people saying, great to work with you, but I hope I never hear from you again. Because it’s a stressful process and it is something that people, you do your business, you do what you do well, let us know.

[00:18:57] Ellis Sweetenham: Deal with the legal things, make it as smooth as possible and get that box ticked for you. It’s a complicated process and one that businesses don’t want to spend time or money on dealing with something that could have been resolved by just filing the trademark from the first place.

[00:19:13] Katie Bell: So this leads me nicely into I always like to give our listeners as much value as possible.

[00:19:18] Katie Bell: Your three kind of top tips that you would give. our industry when it comes to trademarking. So tip number one, what would that be?

[00:19:28] Ellis Sweetenham: Tip one, number one would be probably something that we’ve already really touched on. Don’t think that trademarks don’t apply to you. Trademark applies to everyone. Every business can benefit from it.

[00:19:41] Ellis Sweetenham: And yeah, get it done, get it on your list of priorities and get it in and done and dusted before any issues come up. Love that. Tip number two. Tip number two is use an expert. I touched on it just now in terms of you doing what you do best. Let us deal with it. We file these trademark applications day in, day out.

[00:20:07] Ellis Sweetenham: Let us deal with it. Take the stress off your hands. You know that it’s in the hands of a professional. We will try and make the application as successful for you as possible. And then you can Put your focus back on what’s good for you.

[00:20:21] Katie Bell: And I would say, Alice, having worked with you and obviously Nicola, who’s our COO, who you’ve mainly dealt with, I’ve just been a bystander hoping that I never see your emails in the most loveliest way.

[00:20:32] Katie Bell: It’s just a it feels when we looked at this and we were like, okay, we’re going to have to do this, it felt massive. And it felt a bit like, oh, but I had not even thought about it and Nicola, because Nicola is a very cross every T and dot every I and she is, she is the detailed person and that’s what makes her a great part of this business, is that as the visionary, the person at the time, you don’t like, we don’t know about this stuff.

[00:20:58] Katie Bell: Yeah. We just assume everything’s going to be fine because we’re just sat there thinking with all the ideas and we want to make stuff happen and we want to grow the business. But. Yeah. You need, this bit you need to think about. And then, Nicola said, we’re gonna have to get somebody great at doing this.

[00:21:12] Katie Bell: We work with you guys. And it’s just been, for me, it’s been a really easy, seamless process. So it’s not scary.

[00:21:18] Ellis Sweetenham: Yeah. And it’s not

[00:21:19] Katie Bell: hard work if you get the right people to help you.

[00:21:22] Ellis Sweetenham: Exactly. It can be really daunting and there’s, it can be quite common pitfalls that people fall in. And it is a process that someone can file a trademark application themselves and some of the time it goes smoothly and all is well, but it’s very, it’s harder for us to try and fix problems where we could have easily just come in at the beginning of the process and got it done and a little bit more of a smoother process for you.

[00:21:51] Katie Bell: Yeah, amazing. Do you have a final tip for our listeners at all?

[00:21:54] Ellis Sweetenham: I do, and that is to future proof yourself. So think about the future. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in what you are doing now, but think about the future.

[00:22:05] Ellis Sweetenham: Think about, okay, what are all of the aspects of our brand that we need to protect? Where are we expanding to geographically? Do we need to think about international applications? A lot of the time they take. a significant amount of time, from six months to two years. So let’s get that ball rolling as quickly as we can.

[00:22:26] Ellis Sweetenham: Where am I going in terms of, like you say, exit plans, franchising, selling the business, keep the conversation going and make sure that you don’t just file that first application. You go away. You think everything is great. It’s something to manage. So keep your future in mind and future proof yourself.

[00:22:46] Ellis Sweetenham: Alice, if people

[00:22:47] Katie Bell: now need your help, because they are all sat here listening to this thinking, oh shit, I’m not trademarked, anything in my business, what, how can they reach out to you and learn more about how you can help them?

[00:22:58] Ellis Sweetenham: So the first port of call really is our website. So trademarkroom.

[00:23:03] Ellis Sweetenham: com has so much information on there. We have a blog that our team regularly update with news articles, bits and bobs about. Trademark information that you would need. Have a look there, get in touch with us. That’s got our email, phone number, social media on there. Get in touch with us and have a chat with one of the team and we can essentially hold your hand and walk you through the whole process.

[00:23:29] Ellis Sweetenham: Tmr at trademarkroom. com is our email and 02380 000190 is our phone number. Always someone there to have a chat with, happy to help, either myself or one of the team. And yeah, we can check you through the whole thing. Amazing. Ellis, you have

[00:23:44] Katie Bell: been a delight. Thank you so much for giving up your time to explain to our listeners the importance of trademark and the importance of future proofing your business.

[00:23:51] Ellis Sweetenham: You are very welcome. Thank you for having me.