The identification of products and services in commerce, is achieve through the creation of brands by a distinctive sign that prevails in the minds of consumers and that distinguishes you from competitors. In this article will be addressed the basic concept and all the necessary for the creation of brands.
What is a brand?
It is any sign that’s available to distinguish products or services, indicating the doctrine that brand is the exclusive right of use of a word, phrase, image or symbol in order to identify a product or services from others.
What elements are not subject to a brand registry?
The descriptive words, techniques, common names, quality qualifiers or qualities directly related with the product to offer, signs that go against the public order, moral, that offends or ridicules people, institutions or countries, or instructions that may induce to error regarding its origin, work, amount, etc.
It would not be registrable as a brand for example Apple if its use were to commercialize apples, but it’s suitable for technological products, or stain removal for a cleaning product.
Some questions to consider for the creation of brands:
- How do I want to be identified as a company?
- How do I want to stand out?
- How will the consumers recognize my product?
How should my Brand be?
It should be a distinctive sign, new, imaginative, creative; that element that will help the business grow and that represents one of the main intangible assets of the company, so its development and protection must not be seen as an expense, but as an investment that may represent millions in the business; we may see examples of notorious brands as Google, Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, among others, whose value is up to 109 thousand million dollars!, and most of the people, inclusive, worldwide recognize not only the products or services, but also its business origin.
What to do once My Brand has been defined?
- Verify the registry availability of the product making a search of background registry in order to avoid unnecessary conflicts with other companies and the consequent loss of economic resources and time, which are of great importance in the growing process of the business.
- Start the registration process before the correspondent governmental institution, where through an administrative process will be granted the proper registry, as long as the sign meet the requirements.
- Once the registry of the brand is approved the surveillance in the market should be done in order to verify that there are no new existent identical or similar requests to my registry, and in case there are, exercise the resources that the laws contemplate for the protection of owners of exclusive rights.
Senior Associate
García & Bodán
Nicaragua