How Do I Choose Whether to Register a UK or EU Trademark?

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Trademarks are tools to protect the reputation and the goodwill of your brand. Any sign unique to your business such as words, logos or slogans may be registered as a trademark.

Scope of protection

Trademarks give you an exclusive right to use the protected sign in the country or territory where you register. The national UK trademark system, for instance, grants trademark protection with the borders of the United Kingdom, while a Community Trade Mark extends to all 27 member states. Those businesses that purely trade is this country will just want to register a UK trademark. For example if you run a restaurant and have no intention to extent your business in other countries, the UK is the only country that is relevant to you in respect of trade mark application.

However, if you later decide to enter new markets with your business and want to extend the scope of your trade mark protection it is possible to use base UK trademark as the first step towards registering in other countries.

UK or EU trademark

Deciding whether to opt for a UK or an EU trademark depends almost entirely on the present and future needs, and intended strategy of your business.

It is important to have a clear strategy for your business and to discuss these intentions with your solicitor as using a brand name on the internet will, in some cases, mean that you are using the mark worldwide. But if you only have the right to the brand name in the UK, other business may be able to prevent you from using your chosen brand name if they have a registered this or a similar brand. Business should be aware that they would potentially have to trade in different brand names in other countries if the chosen name were not available in some of the desired countries.

It is impossible for businesses with a brand to protect to ignore the CTM: it has been described as being “central to virtually every European branding decision for virtually every type of business from virtually every country in the world”

One point though to beware of with CTM applications is that if grounds for refusal exist in just one of the 27 Member States the application as a whole may fail. On the other hand, if no substantial objections are raised, the trademark proceeds to registration. Depending on the Registry’s workloads, a CTM will be registered about 5 months after the filing date.

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Source by Paul William Smith