Gain a competitive advantage through trademarking your intellectual property

Registering your trademarks as the intellectual property (IP) of your company is one basic way to gain a competitive edge in business. Let’s take a few minutes to discuss what types of things you can protect using trademarks, what trademarking does, and why such protection is good for your business.

Media that is related to a product that your business produces can be trademarked. For example, you can trademark the name that you have selected for a particular product in order to set it apart from similar devices. You can also trademark a logo which can then be placed on company products, packaging, letterhead, business cards, and more. In fact, you can trademark the packaging itself, which is an especially a good idea if you use some form of novel packaging that your company has developed. Anything that has to do with branding your products can be trademarked. Even if you run a service oriented business, you can acquire trademarks on words, phrases, numbers, letters, shapes, scents, or anything else to do with the service you offer.

So what does trademarking do?It allows your business to identify the services you provide and the products you produce as being unique to your company. No-one else can then use your trademarked branding to try to sell their own products and services.

It’s pretty clear why this is a good business move. In a competitive market, it is advantageous to stand out as unique. You don’t want someone else to steal the logo that you use on your products, work vehicles, ad spots, etc. Some brand names have become so popular that we often call the product by that name rather than by the product name. A trademark means that no other company can use the same name on their product. The same would hold true for a witty name for a service that your company provides. You can even trademark a slogan. This is one of important marketing strategy for business.

Registering trademarks as IP is a smart business tactic that eliminates attempts from fly-by-night companies to pass off their inferior products and services by riding on the coattails of your company’s good reputation. It protects your business from having its reputation tarnished in a case of mistaken identity. It also ensures that someone won’t buy your competitors product by mistake or accidentally call someone else to provide a service they normally get from you because no other company’s products or ads will be able to look quite like yours. Trademarking of business assets is a proven way to help business growth

So what trademarks do you think your business could benefit from?