We´re linked to trademarks daily everywhere. When we wake up, we listen to our cell phone´s alarm or clean our heads with shampoos and our bodies with bath soap. At breakfast time, we eat our favorite cereal, juice, tea, or coffee, all of which are packaged with the name and logo of a brand.
iPhone, Casio, Head & Shoulders, Palmolive, Kellogg’s, Ocean Spray, and Nescafe are familiar brands for us. We use products (or services) with registered trademarks every time. Although each consumer has personal reasons for choosing a product -instead of others- the brands play a role in this election.
At IP Consultores, we think that Market Economy is a factor for economic development. A free marketplace allows everybody to yield goods or services. When consumers have enough market options, they can choose the best for each one. Several trademarks are one of the most relevant Market Economy benefits for consumers.
Brands in the marketplace don´t only entail a consumer´s benefit, overall means a competitiveness issue among undertakings. Competitiveness is an economic incentive for entrepreneurs since they need to do better products (or offer better services) to survive in the marketplace.
Sometimes we choose a product or service for its quality, and sometimes for its price. Many times, we buy something because someone has recommended it. Each one of us has different reasons for choosing a product instead of others. Although we need to recognize individual preferences as factors for buying, we must highlight the impact that brand strategies have on personal decisions.
Companies know that the right marketing strategy will entail better profits. For this reason, they invest millions of dollars in marketing strategies each year. Even though the right marketing strategy will yield enough profits, we should not lose sight that having a trademark is a previous step for achieving it.
While Market Economy has allowed the development of several goods or services -and it intrinsically means the development of several trademarks- another issue that arises with the diversification of the products and services is the different kinds of trademark design.
In the whole Intellectual Property field, imagination is the cornerstone of the mental processes which allow creators and entrepreneurs to yield their creations. When we think about patents, each invention is created after an idea has arisen from analyzing a technical problem related to devices or processes. Something similar happens with industrial designs. When a designer pretends to improve the appearance of some object or device, this is achieved through an idea that has previously arisen in her mind.
Regarding brands, the creative mental process is the same as in other IP fields. What is the similarity between Toblerone’s shape, Nokia´s ring tone, and Tiffany´s blue packaging? Although we could think there isn´t any similarity between them, all are registered Trademarks. And what about iPhone, Casio, Head & Shoulders, Palmolive, Kellogg’s, Ocean Spray, and Nescafe? All of them are Trademarks too.
Nevertheless, all the previous examples are registered Trademarks. We should distinguish between two huge families: Conventional and Non-Conventional. Now that you know why Trademarks are relevant in the marketplace, you should read our post What are Traditional Trademarks? & What Are Non-Traditional Trademarks?
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