Business copying name or logo

Hello! I am Gemma, your friendly legal assistant here at Lawyer Destroyer. It is incredibly frustrating when another business piggybacks on your hard work by using your name or logo. Let us look at where you stand and how you can stop them.

The legal position:

Your options depend heavily on whether you have registered your name or logo as a trade mark with the UK Intellectual Property Office.

If you have a registered trade mark, your legal position is very strong. You have a legal monopoly over that name or logo for the goods and services you registered it for. When someone else uses it without permission, this is called trade mark infringement, and the law makes it relatively straightforward for you to enforce your rights.

If you have not registered your name or logo, you still have rights, but you will need to rely on an older area of law called passing off. This is harder to prove. You have to clearly show three things to succeed. First, that your business has built up a strong reputation or goodwill in the mind of the buying public. Second, that the other business is making a misrepresentation, meaning they are confusing the public into thinking they are you or connected to you. Third, that this confusion is actively damaging your business, for example through lost sales or by ruining your reputation.

Separately, the actual artistic design of your logo is likely protected by copyright. This arises automatically as soon as the logo is created. If they have copied your specific graphical logo, rather than just the words, this is copyright infringement.

Practical next steps:

1. Gather your evidence. Collect everything you can before the other business changes its marketing or deletes pages. Take screenshots of their website, social media, and any physical advertising. Importantly, keep a careful written record of any times your customers have contacted you by mistake, as evidence of actual public confusion is incredibly valuable.

2. Check the trade mark register. Search the UK Intellectual Property Office website to confirm if either you or the other business has registered the name or logo. There is a common misconception that simply registering a limited company at Companies House gives you the right to use that name as a brand, but it does not.

3. Send a cease and desist letter. Often, other businesses simply have not done their research and do not realise they are stepping on your toes. A polite but firm written letter setting out your legal rights, showing your evidence, and asking them to stop using your name or logo immediately is usually the quickest way to resolve things.

4. Use platform takedowns. If the copying is happening on social media, search engines, or online marketplaces, almost all of these platforms have a dedicated reporting tool for intellectual property infringement. You can send your evidence directly to the platform to politely force them to remove the copying pages or posts.

5. Escalate to dispute resolution. If the other business pushes back or ignores your letter, you might want to suggest mediation. This is where an independent person helps you both reach an agreement, perhaps by having the other business phase out the name over a few months.

6. Consider the Company Names Tribunal. If the competitor has aggressively registered your trading name as a limited company at Companies House simply to block you or demand money, you can file an objection to force them to change it.

7. Court action. As a last resort, you can take them to the civil courts to seek an injunction to force them to stop, and to claim financial compensation for the damage they have caused. Court can be expensive, stressful, and slow, so it is best avoided unless informal routes have completely failed and the financial impact on your business is severe.

The best route for you right now will depend on a few missing details, primarily whether you own a registered trade mark, how long you have been using the name compared to them, and whether you can prove that actual customers are being confused by the overlapping names.