Brand And Trademark: Where Marketing Meets Law

The terms "trademark," "brand," and "trade name" are often used interchangeably, though they describe different things in a different context. Especially when used by people in different departments of a company, the understanding of the terms can be different.

It often happens that a company's trademark is confused with its brand and on top of that, the brand name or trade name. A trade name is a name under which a company pursues its business and needs to be distinguished from the entity's registered or legal name. Many countries require registering a trade name or business name in a special register. A trade name often is designated by the term "doing business as," "trading as," or "operating as" to make this distinction from the legal name. A company's brand on the other hand only exists intangibly, in the minds of the public.

When used in a marketing context, the brand has two primary goals: first, to represent the company in public to create maximum awareness and recognition for the organization and its business proposition. This is done by the absolute basics: the brand name (often the trade name), the claim (which often reflects the company's mission statement) and visually by the logo. Second, the brand is a basket that offers the promise to meet clients' expectations for a certain quality of a product or service. For a marketer, a brand is what represents the values of a company and aims to create awareness and trust. This is created through personal contact with the client in connection with the use of services or products, contact with sales or client support, or through brand communication (marketing).

The trademark, however, is the legal means to protect the intellectual property associated with an identifier of a business. The trademark can be in the form of a symbol, logo, design, word, slogan, or combination of several elements. In some instances, even a sound, smell, or taste can be protected. Legal protection is of the utmost importance for any business because the marketing department has spent a lot of time defining and documenting the company's unique selling proposition (USP), core values, market position, corporate identity and brand strategy. It can only be unique, though, if no market participant can copy it.

Some history

The word "brand" has its origin in the days when shepherds used to place burn marks on their livestock with a branding iron in order to differentiate it from the livestock of other shepherds...