TRADEMARK

In the world, and not just Nigeria different people engage in the same trade, for example, in Nigeria, we see cement being produced by Lafarge and Dangote, or Sugar being produced by Dangote and St. Louis, let’s not get to Noodles by Indomie and Golden Penny also. They’re so many!!!

It is clearly not an offense to engage in the same trade, but confusion could arise where on needs to identify these trade and its origin, distinguish between them among others. And once again intellectual property is here to save the day by clearing up this confusioneith the introduction of Trademark.

Trademark is a mark which could be a word, symbol, design or a combination of these things proposed to be used or used to identify one’s goods and services. It helps clients and purchasers recognize a particular trade and distinguish it from others.

Basically, a trademark shows you
- the orgin of a product or service;
- the particular standard of quality.

It protects the purchasers from being confused and helps them identify and distinguish the different trades. It further protects the goodwill and reputation built by a particular trade, so when you see Danogote’s Trademark, you can easily associate the goodwill and reputation built by Dangote to the particular trade.

In understanding how a trademark works, there are several things you should know:
1. If you don’t register your trademark and someone else uses it, you cannot bring an action against such a person because the law does not allow for actions for unregistered trademarks.

2. It is not all names, signs or symbols that can be registered, for example, you cannot register the Nigerian coat of arms as your trademark.

3. There are several types of marks that can also not be registered such as mark that describes the trade, marks that are deceptive (for example ‘Polish On’ for Mark’s thatnhave nothing to do with polish) , marks that are scandalous, generic, among others.

4. Marks that are identical or nearly resembles another trademark in respect to the same goods which is likely to deceive of cause confusion cannot be registered, the law prohibits such.

Thus these categories of mark cannot be registered, they are prohibited from being registered and as we established earlier, it is essential that your trademark be registered if not, no action for infringement can be brought against it.

And as always…

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