Business Name Protection & Lack Of It

T

trajan

Registered User
Messages
295
Firstly, thanks for the new look of the website. Great.

I realise that one can't take away someone's name or right to trade under their name.
('Name' here is understood as their natural name by birth/adoption/legal before establishing their business.
I doubt if the law would countenance a carpetbagger changing his name by deed poll to, say, Nash so he could sell his own brand of lemonade and gain from the long-established fame of existing firm, Nash's.)
But I see no sense in allowing freedom to all and sundry to copy a trade name like, say, Emerald Fashions where the latter is an established business: it can only cause stress, expense and loss of reputation for the established business and endanger the livelihood of its employees.
Yet that's where the Companies Act 2014 has left us.
Did anyone hear of consultation in regard to business name/company name rights PRIOR to the long awaited Companies Act being drafted ?
 
CRO man just told me this morning that the non-restriction of business names was a stipulation of the 2014 Companies Act. I said nothing about trade marks.
 
You've either misunderstood him, or failed to explain it properly above.
The owner of a registered trademark can take a case against anyone else who uses that name. In your example, Nash's is a registered trademark:
[broken link removed]
 
Yes, I'm learning about TMs now.
But the CRO discussion - and he did understand it, it was plain enough for him - was purely about business names.
If another means of protection exists like TM protection it explains why government officials didn't restrict business names - they'd lose ongoing revenues from trademark fees.
So now people have to do trademark searches and all that . . . :rolleyes:
 
Ah, ok. Nothing changed because of the companies act 2014. Registering a business name never gave any trademark protection.

Take for example "The Coffee Shop"
There are at least a dozen businesses registered with that business name. It's always been the case - this is the name a person / entity trades as.

If you've got a business, and someone else is trying to use your business name it might be worth talking to a specialist in the area.
 
If you've got a business, and someone else is trying to use your business name it might be worth talking to a specialist in the area.

Same old chestnut. More money to "experts" in an area of admin law that ought to be 100% transparent.
Just off the phone from the Patents Office in Kilkenny.
Must be something in the water there, all staff seem to be very slow - so slow and so loath to abstract that they practically make us commercially undress before they can offer opinion on what words may be used in a successful TM application . . .
 
The case cited relates to actual infringement of a trading company.
It is very interesting and informative. But also as a reflection of the limited depth of consideration by the current calibre of High Court judges. I couldn't see someone back in the day like Ronan Keane rebuffing the original injunction application.

My discussion with PO just looked at criteria for getting a trademark for a new business' name. For example, if I was setting up Galway Free Range Eggs now, I'd have to ask myself if there's anything unique about Free Range Eggs (no), Galway (no), Galway Free Range Eggs (no, unless my company really was the first major popular supplier from that county - but even then what right do I have to commandeer the name ?).
It did emerge in the discussion that the first in the field enjoys a kind of tempo advantage. For example, if I set up a company called Kerry Glass Engravers and we really are the only glass engravers in Co Kerry, that I have a good chance of both getting a TM on the company name and also of retaining it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top