You hired a graphic designer, did the packaging of your products, promoted your business, and brought all your products to market with under a brand. Now you find out, that the name of your brand is already used by another company or there are more brands like yours!
At an early or advance stage of the commercialization of your product and/or service, it is important that every entrepreneur knows how to protect their brand legally.
An entrepreneur before registering the name of their brand must do a phonetic search with the National Intellectual Rights Service, which has an approximate value of $ 16 dollars for each name you want to research. This search aims to indicate how many brands have a similar name or if there are already other brands with the same name registered.
Once the research application is entered, it is published, and you wait to be notified if other brands oppose your registration. If that is the case, they expose their legal arguments on why you should not obtain your registration. In case there is an opposition you make a response and wait for the resolution of the National Service of Intellectual Rights, which evaluates the legal arguments of the two parts and resolves whether they grant your registration or not. This process lasts approximately 5 months.
We recommend that you have legal representation to correctly fill out the registration form. In addition, each stage has different response times, so you will need legal representation to be able to answer within the given time and defend yourself against an opposition.
If you need more information over fees, we attach this link which belongs to the National Service of Intellectual Rights: derechosintelectuales.gob.ec.
The National Service of Intellectual Rights encourage the protection of intellectual rights and provides discounts on these services for:
1.- Small or medium enterprises
2.- Independent researchers
3.- Higher education institutions
4.- Public sector entities
5.- Small and medium farmer and business organizations of agricultural production
6.- Popular and solidarity economy companies
7.- Artisans
The advantages of having the intellectual rights of your brand are:
- Deny the entry of new competitors with the same name because this will confuse your clients.
- If your brand gains prestige, the name can be worth a lot of money. You can sell your brand, get royalties for franchising or rental for usage licenses, becoming an intangible asset.
- For 10 extendable years you can protect the prestige that your brand can acquire. After this period you need to renovate
- Avoid legal conflic
- Reduce the investment risk: if you cannot register your brand and you have already put all your effort and money into marketing and advertising, you will have to change everything to another available name that you can register, and the initial investment would be lost
- You can force a brand to remove its name from the market and/or compensate you for the damage caused by using your name
It should be noted that once the name of your brand is registered, it is important that there is a monthly review of the brands that wish to enter the market to oppose their registration if you feel that it is similar or equal to yours
Part of the Sistemplan team is made up of Ecuadorian entrepreneurs, so we are aware of the effort behind the formation of a brand. Our main interest is that you have more tools in technology and knowledge about the registration process so that you do not waste money or time.
It is difficult to start the path of the entrepreneur and many times protecting the brand is not seen as a priority or investment but as an expense. But if we analyze the previous information, this can help avoiding legal disputes and secure your investment, and therefore save your money.
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