Persuading clients to adopt distinctive trade marks is no easy
task. For reasons that are varied and complex, many business
people, and particularly marketers, are firmly convinced that the
best way to brand a product is to:
- describe what the product does
- hint at what it does
- tell consumers what part of the world
it comes from
- tell consumers how brilliant it
is
The fundamental requirement for trade mark protection through
registration is, of course, distinctiveness and this excludes many
of the names that companies opt to protect. Yet, it's also true
that companies often manage to get registrations for trade marks
that are weak. In some cases, this is because the trade mark owner
is able to show that the trade mark has been used extensively, and
that it has therefore become distinctive, known as "acquired
distinctiveness" in trade mark parlance. In other cases,
it's because the trade mark owner has added other features,
such as design elements, to
