Trademark

Filing

A trademark makes it possible to identify goods or services, and thus in particular to distinguish them from the competition. Protecting your brand in France allows you to benefit from a monopoly on it on French territory for a period of 10 years, renewable. To protect it outside France, specific additional deposits are necessary.

In France, however, to benefit from the protection offered by trademark law, it is necessary to register the trademark you wish to protect, to register your trademark. of the national institute for industrial property In the absence of such a filing, no protection will be offered, except to be able to claim a “well-known” mark.

It is therefore essential, in the context of the development of a company’s activities, and a fortiori in the event of a desire to develop a network, to proceed with the filing of its trademark.
However, this filing is only one step in the trademark protection process, which must take place relatively early in the development process.

You can watch a video here explaining how to register your trademark.

Indeed, before proceeding with the filing, and after having precisely defined the goods or services to be protected, it is necessary to ensure the availability and validity of the sign, which must be distinctive, that one wishes to protect. Isn’t an identical or only similar sign already used by third parties for similar goods or services? A search for anteriority will have to be carried out in order to ensure this.

Once the deposit has been made, and the corresponding fees paid, the INPI acknowledges receipt of the deposit. The INPI will carry out a formal verification of the registration application and publish it. This publication opens a period of two months during which holders of earlier, identical or similar trademarks may oppose the filing as long as the registered trademark may present a likelihood of confusion with theirs. If an opposition is accepted by the INPI, the application for registration may be partially, or totally, rejected.  In the absence of opposition, or if these are rejected, the trademark will be registered and the registration certificate issued. In the absence of opposition, this process takes about five months.

We have made a short video here to explain this notion of prior art research.

Once registration is confirmed, protection runs from the date of filing the application for registration. The registration of the trademark must therefore intervene quickly in the process of developing a network. When filing a trademark abroad, the steps in the process are generally similar, but the deadlines can vary significantly.

For more information on trademark registration, we invite you to visit our page containing all articles related to trademark registration.

Gouache Avocats can help you register your trademark.