Giving your business its own identity

In our day-to-day lives, commerce plays a huge part, whether we buy food and drinks, stock up on toiletries or have a haircut.

Since the decision of the consumers is partly influenced by brands and their reputation, it is therefore important for businesses to acquire exclusive rights over their trademarks.

Not all marks can be registered though.

The Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines provides that descriptive marks, misleading marks, generic names, marks containing scandalous, immoral, deceptive and disparaging material/s, among others, cannot be registered.

After carefully planning what the mark would be like, the next best thing to do is to file an application for trademark registration before the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPO).

When all the conditions of application and registrability are met, the application shall be published on the Official Gazette of trademarks.

However, not all applications result in successful registration.

The law allows any person who believes that he would be damaged by the registration to file with the IPO an opposition to such application.

The issues raised in the opposition will be threshed out through a legal proceeding.

If the opposition is denied, or if there is no opposition at all, the trademark shall then be registered, and a certificate of registration shall be issued. The said certificate of registration shall serve as proof of registration and ownership of the mark.

Once a certificate of registration is issued, it shall be valid for 10 years, and renewable for another 10.

However, as a condition for the continued validity of the registration, the mark should be used in commerce within the Philippines.

In such case, the owner of the mark has to file a DAU, or Declaration of Actual Use, within the prescribed periods.

The mark having been registered, the owner now has the right to prevent all third parties, without his consent, from using in the course of his business marks that are identical or similar with his registered mark and which are likely to cause confusion.

Businesses that do not register their trademarks run the risk of their marks being imitated without protection, and worse, to be labeled as the “infringer” by someone else who registered the mark that they failed to register in their own name.