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Hynes Lawyers - www.hyneslawyers.com.au
 -   All business owners, including those in the accommodation industry, should consider the protection of their trading name.  People often believe that once they have registered a business name or company name this ensures that they have ownership of that name – this is incorrect.  It may come as a surprise to many business owners to learn that registration of a business name, a company name or a domain name does not guarantee ownership of that name.

A domain name is merely an on-line identity and a business name or company name is simply a process adopted by government to allow third parties to determine who are the persons behind the business or company. Therefore, by registering a business or company name you in fact only have a license to use that name for the period of the registration.

The only way to properly protect your name and or a logo is through trade mark registration.  Trade mark registration allows you to register as the owner of a name or logo giving you exclusive rights and control over the use of that name or logo throughout Australia for 10 years at a time.

Trade mark registration is superior protection to registering business name, company name and domain name.  If you have a registered trade mark you can stop someone registering the same or similar name or logo in the same industry.

A trade mark can protect a phrase, a word, sound, number, smell, shape, colour, picture which distinguishes your products or services from those of another.

People often associate trade marks as being something only required by companies such as Coca Cola, McDonalds, Virgin, Adidas etc.  For this reason people often think a trade mark is difficult or expensive to register and maintain.  That is not correct.

There are so many facets which go into running a good business.  Protecting your intellectual property rights is one of those key areas.  If you have a name that you have invested or, are about to invest, time and money in promoting, you really should protect it, before someone else does and you loose the right to use that name or logo.

If you do not protect your business name using a trade mark registration and someone else registers a similar name and or logo as a trade mark, you will have a complicated and expensive legal battle to permit you to continue using your name.  The outcome depends very much on the individual circumstances, however it is something that you could lose, in which case the consequences for your business could be substantial, perhaps fatal.   It is worth investing in a solid platform to build your name and register a trade mark.