Trademark Registration
You can’t licence what you don’t own.
Trading under a name for years doesn’t make it yours. Registration does — and it needs to happen before you franchise, not after.
The most expensive assumption in franchising.
A business owner trades under a name for eight years. Signage, packaging, a following, a reputation. They assume the name is theirs because they’ve used it and nobody has complained.
Then they franchise — and the whole model rests on licensing that name to other people. At which point one of two things happens. Either someone else has registered it and your franchisees are trading on borrowed time, or nobody has, and a competitor registers it next year and you find out the hard way.
Rebranding one store is expensive. Rebranding a network of twelve, with signage, packaging, uniforms and a customer base attached to the old name, is something else entirely.
What the process covers
Availability search
Before anything else — is the mark actually free? A search of the register for identical and confusingly similar marks in the classes that matter to you.
Classification
Trademarks are registered by class of goods and services. Register in the wrong class and your protection doesn’t cover what you actually sell.
What to register
Word mark, logo, or both. Each protects something different, and the right answer depends on how your brand is actually recognised by customers.
Application & filing
Prepared and filed with CIPC, with the specification drafted broadly enough to be useful and narrowly enough to be accepted.
Examination & objections
Registration takes time and applications draw objections. We handle the correspondence rather than leaving you to interpret it.
Licensing into the franchise
Once registered, the mark has to be properly licensed to franchisees through the agreement — otherwise the registration protects the wrong party.
How we handle it
We search first
Before you spend anything on filing, we establish whether the mark is available. If it isn’t, you’ll want to know now rather than after the signage goes up.
We advise on scope
Which classes, which marks, and how far to go. Over-filing wastes money; under-filing leaves gaps a competitor can walk through.
We file and follow it
Application lodged with CIPC and tracked through examination. You’ll hear from us at each stage rather than wondering where it’s got to.
We licence it properly
The registration is written into your franchise agreement so franchisees have a clear, revocable right to use it — and no more than that.
Do this first. Not last.
Trademark registration is routinely the last thing on a franchisor’s list, because it’s the least visible. Nobody walks into your store and admires your intellectual property position.
But it’s the one item on the list that gets harder and more expensive the longer you leave it. Every month you trade unregistered is another month someone else can file. Every store you open is another set of signage to replace if you lose the name. And a franchisee’s attorney will ask about it — because a franchise licensing an unregistered mark is a franchise with a hole in the middle of it.
It’s not the exciting part. It’s the part that makes the rest safe.
What goes with it
Trademark work runs alongside brand development and feeds directly into the franchise agreement.
Brand Development ·
Franchise Agreement ·
Franchise Documentation ·
Franchise Readiness ·
See all services →
Is your brand actually yours?
One free hour, and we’ll tell you where your trademark position stands before you licence it to anyone.
Or call Robin directly on 082 451 1604