4 good reasons to register your trademark

Reason 1: Being first

In most countries of the world, the deposit takes precedence over usage. This means that, in principle, the first to file a trademark is the one who has the right to use it. As a result, if you use a trademark without having registered it, and a third party registers the trademark for the same activities, then in principle they can prevent you from continuing to use your trademark. This can have very harmful consequences for you, even though this principle obviously has exceptions, such as bad faith on the part of the applicant (who was, for example, aware of your use) or if you have other prior opposable rights, such as a company name or an domain name.

Reason 2: Getting a monopoly

Thanks to your trademark right, you obtain a monopoly that allows you to be the only one to exploit the trademark for the goods and/or services that constitute your activity. You can therefore oppose the registration of new trademarks that are too close to yours, or the use of such a trademark without it having been registered.

Reason 3: Protecting against third party attacks

When you are the first to register a trademark, no third party can prevent you from using it, as long as you make serious use of it yourself. See our usage sheet. The trademark thus serves as a shield, allowing you to exploit your brand without worrying about the possible action of a third party. But to be sure to be safe from such attacks, nothing is better than, at the time of filing, good similarities research. Only these ensure that you can use your brand with a high degree of certainty.

Reason 4: To be able to act more easily

Being the owner of a trademark opens the way to two actions that those who use the trademark without having registered it cannot use:

• Opposition: this is an administrative procedure before the INPI that allows you, at a lower cost, to prevent the registration of a later trademark that is too close to yours. See our opposition fact sheet. It is really the simplest, shortest and cheapest procedure to deprive a third party of a right on a name identical or close to yours in your sector of activity or a sector close to yours. It also allows you to nip a possible infringement in the bud: without trademark rights, the opponent usually abandons his project and changes his name to move away from yours.
• infringement action, which is only open to holders of intellectual property rights, and which makes it possible to punish the unlawful use of a trademark by a third party. In particular, this action allows recourse to counterfeit seizures, which facilitate proof during the trial. See our fact sheet on counterfeiting.

Without a trademark right, you would only have at your disposal the common law liability action, which requires, in particular, the demonstration of a prejudice: it is not always easy to prove, for example, that the use of the name in question by your opponent has prevented you from concluding sales or has diverted customers who would have come to you without his action.