What's The Use? Give Your Trade-Mark's Life Some Meaning

The most important, and most often overlooked, aspect of giving validity and value to your company's trade-marks is how they are "used." Unlike copyright works or patented inventions, that remain protected even if never exposed to the public, trade-mark protection only exists if your product or service is actually being sold to the public under the "brand" that is your trade-mark.

This is because trade-mark law arose as consumer protection law in industrial revolution England – so that your average upwardly-mobile peasant could differentiate between the beer from Stoke-on-Trent and that from Wiggles-on-Thames. Unless consumers are seeing trade-marks in the marketplace, to help them choose the products they prefer, a trade-mark has no point.