Trademark regulations in Australia

In the growing modern reality, copyright has paramount importance. The development of technology and globalisation have made copyright protection more difficult than in previous centuries. The speed of information dissemination has made it more difficult to protect copyright as the control mechanism becomes more complex in the age of the Internet. However, resilience to modern challenges has further refined the standard of copyright protection. Copyright covers a wide range, including the most important trademark regulation. What is a trademark, how is it registered and what rights does it give to the owner? In this article, we will briefly review the issues related to this topic.

A trademark is any character that is displayed graphically and has the ability to distinguish by one enterprise manufactured goods and/or services rendered, second goods produced by the enterprise and/or rendered from service. A symbol can be a word, words, human name, letters, numbers, sounds, images, a three-dimensional figure, as well as the shape of the goods, the packaging, or other external decoration of the goods in colour or using a combination of colors.

Any individual, a company, or a legal practice can be an applicant and may file the application for the registration of the particular trademark. The owner may then prohibit third parties from using the trademark if offending trademark is identical or has similar features. The owner can fully or partially transfer special rights to another person to use the trademark and issue a license to use the trademark.

The basis for the origin of a trademark right is its registration. Once registered, trademarks constitute personal property in their own right. Only a registered trademark grants you the exclusive right to use, licence, and sell it. The conditions for trademark registration in Australia are governed by the Trade Marks Act 1995 and Australian case law. You can register a trademark for a very wide range of things such as a corporate logo, packaging, color, sound, and even shape.

You can register your trademark in an Australian Government agency that administers intellectual property (IP) rights and legislation relating to patents, trademarks, designs, and plant breeder's rights. All applications must include information about the owner, personal information such as address and submission date. You also have to submit a description of the goods and/or services and representation of the trademark. The last step is to pay a fee when submitting the application. You can keep your trademark registration as long as you use it and pay the renewal fees every ten years.

After filling in the trademark registration form, the agency conducts an examination.  During the examination, the grounds for trademark registration are checked, which includes formal and material prerequisites.

So before applying to the agency, it is important for a person to apply to an authorised law firm because several factors need to be checked before registering a trademark.  As we mentioned above, it is very important to define the type of trademark you’re applying for and the classes of goods and/or services your trademark should be registered in. This is essential because after a trademark has been applied, you can only make small adjustments after that point.