A pre-recorded streaming VIDEO replay of the April 2022 webcast, Trademark Aspects of Launching a Brand or Rebranding.
Course Outline
- Learn best practices for selecting a new brand or rebranding from John Farmer, an intellectual property attorney with decades of experience in trademark and other IP law and in protecting that IP in evolving technology environments
- Review relevant trademark concepts
- Examine commonplace mistakes and the consequences of them
- Discover how to preserve the power and value of a new brand through watching and policing
Mistakes made in picking a new brand (which is a trademark) or rebranding can have major consequences for that business for its entire lifecycle. Making a bad choice can lead to having a brand that is effectively unprotectable against infringement or other use by others. Making a bad choice also can make defending that trademark from infringement and other misuse (which is called watching and policing) extraordinarily expensive and sometimes difficult or impossible to achieve.
This program teaches best practices for picking a strong new brand and rebranding. It also examines commonplace mistakes.
Topics to be covered include:
- Quick review of relevant trademark concepts
- The pecking order of trademark strength
- Sizing up proximity of your trademark candidate to other trademarks already in use—how close is too close?
- Clearance of new trademark candidates, and what clearance should accomplish
- Mark registration strategy tips and tricks for new branding or rebranding
- Best practices in picking a new trademark—what works and what doesn’t
- Best practices in rebranding
- Commonplace trademark selection and rebranding mistakes, and the cost and other downsides of making them
- Dealing with ad agencies and branding firms, including privilege issues
- How to keep your old brand from getting taken by someone else
- Launching a major brand—preparing to be sued
- Preserving the value of what you build: overview of trademark infringement watching and policing, and how it dovetails with clearance
- Tales of woe and lessons taught thereby