Re­gis­ter­ing your company name

A company cannot be es­tab­lished without an ap­pro­pri­ate name. If the name has potential for branding, it can quickly gain pop­ular­ity and be as­so­ci­ated with the quality of your products or services. This is why it’s important to protect it. By re­gis­ter­ing your company name as a trademark, you ensure that you retain exclusive rights to your brand.

How to register a company name

Before getting your business up and running, the first step is to register your company name. If you wish to start your business as a limited company, you need to ensure that your name isn’t the same as, or too similar to, an existing business name. If it is, you may be required to change it. The name must end in ‘Limited’ or ‘Ltd.’ If you’re re­gis­ter­ing the company in Wales, ‘Cy­fyn­gedig’ and ‘Cyf’ are also ac­cept­able.

If you’re a sole trader, you can trade under your own name or choose a different name to dis­tin­guish the business from your personal identity. The business name and your personal name must appear on all official paperwork and invoices. Sole trader business names cannot include terms like ‘Ltd’, ‘Limited’, ‘Limited Liability Part­ner­ship’ (LLP), ‘Public Limited Company’ (PLC), or ‘plc’. There are strict rules about the names and words you can use for your sole trader business, and you can find them on GOV.UK.

When it comes to part­ner­ships, similar to sole trading, you can trade using your own names or choose another name. You don’t need to formally register the business name for a part­ner­ship, but all partners’ names, as well as the business name, must be included on official documents such as invoices.

When con­sid­er­ing which business name to register, you might also want to ensure that a cor­res­pond­ing domain name is available if you plan to establish an online presence. To fully protect your brand, you should consider re­gis­ter­ing your business name as a trademark with the UK In­tel­lec­tu­al Property Office (IPO).

How to register a trademark

The term ‘trademark’ refers to any dis­tinct­ive symbol, name, or design that iden­ti­fies and dif­fer­en­ti­ates the goods or services of one company from another. This can include company names, logos, slogans, product names, or even packaging that rep­res­ents the brand. A trademark is a valuable form of in­tel­lec­tu­al property that ensures your brand stands out in the market.

In the UK, you can trademark the same company name that you’ve re­gistered with Companies House, and you can also trademark other elements such as a slogan, logo, or the name of a product or service you offer. A re­gistered trademark gives you exclusive rights to its use, provided you continue to use it in business.

Re­gis­ter­ing a trademark with the UK In­tel­lec­tu­al Property Office (UKIPO) provides several benefits, including the right to:

• Use the ‘®’ symbol next to your brand, in­dic­at­ing that it’s a re­gistered trademark.
• Take legal action against anyone who uses your trademark without per­mis­sion.
• License or sell your trademark to others.

Trade­marks can last in­def­in­itely, as long as you continue to use them in commerce. However, a trademark must be renewed every 10 years. Once re­gistered, your trademark is protected only in the UK. If you want your trademark to be protected in other countries or regions, such as the EU or in­ter­na­tion­ally, you will need to apply for EU trade­marks or In­ter­na­tion­al trade­marks.

The process of re­gis­ter­ing a trademark typically takes about four months, assuming there are no ob­jec­tions. However, it’s important to conduct a thorough trademark search to ensure that your mark is unique and doesn’t conflict with existing trade­marks. If someone else can prove that their use of the trademark predates yours, your trademark rights could be chal­lenged.

If you’re con­sid­er­ing expanding in­ter­na­tion­ally, you can research how to protect your trademark abroad through the EU and In­ter­na­tion­al Trade­marks process.

Is my trademark protected in a foreign country?

If you decide to use your trademark outside the UK, you need to apply to the trademark office in each re­spect­ive country. To simplify the process, there are European and in­ter­na­tion­al ap­plic­a­tion systems that cover many countries, offering several benefits:

• Less paperwork
• Lower costs (both for filing and agents)
• Faster results
• Simple ap­plic­a­tion process

A pre­requis­ite for applying for an in­ter­na­tion­al trademark is that you must first have a base ap­plic­a­tion or re­gis­tra­tion in the UK before you can apply for an in­ter­na­tion­al trademark.

You can apply for pro­tec­tion in multiple countries through the Madrid Protocol, which allows you to register your trademark in multiple countries with a single ap­plic­a­tion. To do this, you file with the In­ter­na­tion­al Bureau of the World In­tel­lec­tu­al Property Or­gan­iz­a­tion (WIPO), ref­er­en­cing your UK trademark ap­plic­a­tion.

As of March 2025, the Madrid Union comprises 115 members, en­com­passing 131 countries, meaning your trademark could be protected in all of them. However, be aware that the in­ter­na­tion­al system only allows you to apply for a single trademark (mark) per ap­plic­a­tion. Unlike in the UK, where you can apply for several marks under one ap­plic­a­tion, the Madrid system requires separate ap­plic­a­tions for multiple marks.

Can all names be trade­marked?

If you’re in the donut-making business, you might have thought about trade­mark­ing the term ‘donuts’ as your brand name and maybe even securing the domain donuts.co.uk. Un­for­tu­nately, that won’t work, as the law doesn’t allow companies to claim generic or de­script­ive terms as their pro­pri­et­ary marks. Words like ‘chairs’, ‘dogs’, ‘computer’, and other common terms are generally not eligible for trademark pro­tec­tion. These words are con­sidered too generic, as everyone should have the right to use them to describe their products or services. This is why they cannot be trade­marked.

One notable UK case involved the British Sugar Plc v. James Robertson & Sons Ltd case in 1996. British Sugar tried to trademark the word ‘TREAT’ for con­fec­tion­ery, but the court ruled that the term was too de­script­ive and not dis­tinct­ive enough for a trademark.

Another in­ter­est­ing case is Apple Inc., which is allowed to use the name ‘Apple’ because it operates in the tech­no­logy and elec­tron­ics sector, not the food sector. This is a key point in trademark law: a name that might be generic in one industry can be trade­marked in another if it’s dis­tinct­ive enough within that sector.

Trade­marks that have become generic and gen­er­i­cised

Even though you have legally protected a trademark, it doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily mean that it will remain protected forever. In rare cases, some trade­marks that have become gen­er­i­cised can lose their legal pro­tec­tion. This process is known as gen­er­icide, where a trademark becomes a common term used to refer to a type of product or service, rather than a specific brand.

For example, Thermos was ori­gin­ally a trademark of Thermos GmbH, but over time it became syn­onym­ous with all vacuum flasks, re­gard­less of the man­u­fac­turer. As a result, Thermos lost its trademark pro­tec­tion in some jur­is­dic­tions.

Here are some other examples of trade­marks that have become gen­er­i­cised:

• Aspirin (ori­gin­ally a trademark of Bayer, now commonly used for any acet­ylsali­cyl­ic acid product)
• Catseye (referring to re­flect­ive road markings, ori­gin­ally a trademark)
• Escalator (ori­gin­ally a trademark, now a generic term for moving stairs)
• Flip phone (ori­gin­ally a term trade­marked by certain companies, now used generally)
• Sellotape (a trademark of a brand of adhesive tape, now commonly used gen­er­ic­ally in the UK)
• Tram­po­line (ori­gin­ally trade­marked but became a general term for the type of equipment)
• Videotape (ori­gin­ally a brand name, but now a generic term for magnetic tape used for video recording).

Please refer to the legal notice for this article.