Trademark help needed

[Gary Taylor]

Hello, I own 2 beauty salons, since naming them, in my town lots of other salons have now stolen my name, some have modified slightly but its obvious they've copied.. However, I have decided to rebrand my business name, and logo so would like to trademark it, in the UK at least

But I've looked on the site and its a minefield of classes

All I want to do is trademark my salon logo and name so its appropriate to beauty salons

Can anyone give any advice or tell me the class I need to file under as I looked for beauty im assuming 44 covers it?

Do I need to make 2 applications, 1 for the name, and 1 for the logo or are they both tied together?



Any advice would really be appreciated

 

[Alison Moore]

You can use trademark companies that help with all this and make sure it's done correctly. They don't cost a fortune either.

 

[eteb3]

since naming them, in my town lots of other salons have now stolen my name

You may have an action against them for passing off. Have you looked into that? Could get them to rebrand themselves if your TM lawyers send them a frightener.

 

[Noah]

Hello, I own 2 beauty salons, since naming them, in my town lots of other salons have now stolen my name, some have modified slightly but its obvious they've copied.. However, I have decided to rebrand my business name, and logo so would like to trademark it, in the UK at least

But I've looked on the site and its a minefield of classes

All I want to do is trademark my salon logo and name so its appropriate to beauty salons

Can anyone give any advice or tell me the class I need to file under as I looked for beauty im assuming 44 covers it?

Do I need to make 2 applications, 1 for the name, and 1 for the logo or are they both tied together?



Any advice would really be appreciated

You certainly can do it yourself; I have done several, though not for beauty salons, so I cannot give specific advice.

Read here and eslewhere to help with specifying the Class correctly.

Don't worry too much about the terms; do think about what you will (and ought to) do about defending the trademark.

Proviso : This advice only applies for limited, low-profile trademark applications; you should certainly engage an IPO lawyer if your trademark is critical to your business, want to go international, anticipate conflicts, etc.

The Trademark Office is actually your first line of defence once you have been awarded a trademark; I have been officially discouraged from an application because an IPO officer thought it might infringe an existing filing (I disagreed) and told me if I continued he would be obliged to notify the existing trademark owner. I withdrew and lost the £170(?) filing fee.

 

[Panoramix IP]

Class 44 is probably sufficient for your purposes if you are just providing standard beauty services and not selling products. The process of applying for a trade mark is fairly straight forward and in your case shouldn't be a problem for you. You will need to file two applications. As a trade mark lawyer myself, I would recommend undertaking a clearance search using https://www.tmdn.org/tmview/welcome. Ideally you would have a professional do this for you so that you can mitigate any risks of the application being refused and infringement of other's trade marks.

There are also a number of criteria for a trade mark to be registered including that it has to be distinctive and non-descriptive. This is rarely a problem for logos but can be for word marks.

There is also the issue of the competitors potentially having prior user rights (i.e., rights accrued prior to registration of your trade mark) that could prevent you from enforcing your trade mark against them.

I do think that the small cost of consulting with an IP lawyer would be money well spent for you.