​Trademarks: The Basics

Trademarks are a form of intellectual property right for your commercial exploitation and they act as commercial protection.

What is a trademark?

A trademark is basically your brand’s signature. It’s anything that helps people instantly recognise that a product or service comes from you — whether that’s a name, logo, slogan, colour, shape, or even a sound. As long as it can be represented clearly on the trademark register and distinguishes your business from others, it can function as a trademark.

Think of the Coca‑Cola logo: you don’t need to see the company name to know exactly what you’re getting. That’s the power of a strong trademark — it tells customers who you are and what to expect.

The Trade Marks Act 1994 sets out the law behind trademarks and can be found on the government legislation website.

How does a trademark work?

A trademark works as your calling card. It lets the world know that the product or achievement is yours. You can alert others that the mark is a trademark by adding the following symbols:

• If the mark is registered then ® follows the mark where it’s in use.
• If the mark is unregistered then ™ follows the mark.

You can have rights in an unregistered trademark in the UK, as long as you’ve built up enough goodwill to rely on the common‑law rule of passing off. But registering your mark with the Intellectual Property Office gives you much stronger, clearer protection and makes it easier to enforce your rights if someone tries to copy you

Anyone can apply for a UK trademark, but your application will be checked to make sure your mark is distinctive, not misleading, and doesn’t clash with any earlier rights. You’ll also need to choose the right class from the official Nice Classification system, which includes 45 categories of goods and services.

Once registered, your trademark gives you the exclusive rights to the use of the sign. No one can use this without your permission. The trademark becomes an asset of the company that you can commercially exploit. It can be a money-making asset if you allow others to use it for a price, for example.

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Where can you find existing trademarks?

The Trade Mark Register and Trade Mark Journal contain UK marks. The Trade Mark Register allows you to search marks via name, registration number, owner, and keyword or phrase. The Journal publishes all new application marks, while you can see what marks have been applied for in previous editions.

Trademarks are key business assets, which not only allow protection of the company’s name and logo, but also the goodwill associated with the two. It is, therefore, vital that you take steps to protect your trademark via registration. Further information about registration is available online, alternatively look at the Legal section of our Knowledge Hub.

How do you value a trademark, logo, and other IP?

Working out what your intellectual property is worth can feel a bit abstract – after all, you can’t touch or pick up a trademark the way you can a laptop or office chair. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.

Trademarks can hold standalone value and can be bought, sold, licensed, or even used to secure investment. The challenge is that valuing them isn’t always straightforward, and there’s no one‑size‑fits‑all approach. The UKIPO notes that while valuation can be difficult, there are recognised methods you can use – such as comparing similar brands, estimating the royalty someone would pay to use your mark, or calculating the cost of creating the brand from scratch.

At the end of the day, your trademark is worth what the market is willing to pay for it — but using tried‑and‑tested valuation methods will give you a solid starting point.