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Slogans and taglines: increasing brand name recognition
A slogan is a widely used marketing tool that can increase the name awareness of your brand or product. A slogan, also referred to as a tagline or pay-off, is a short sentence with a clear marketing goal. With this sentence you aim to further boost your brand and ensure that as many people as possible remember the message.
Examples of slogans
A tagline or slogan can be used to support the brand, for example in an advertisement. There are numerous examples of advertising slogans and taglines from commercials. Who has not, for example, heard the slogans ‘I’m loving it’, ‘Because you’re worth it’ or ‘Sense & Simplicity’?
Once you have coined a good slogan, you naturally do not want someone else to run off with your creativity. You will therefore need to protect your tagline or slogan against infringement by third parties. While slogans are very important, their protection is unfortunately not separately regulated by law. However, this does not mean that there are no possibilities for protecting your slogan.
Various protection options
In some cases, you can register the tagline or slogan as a trademark. A slogan that is not initially considered to be a distinguishing mark by the public may start to possess sufficient distinctiveness over the course of time. As a result, the slogan can be registered as a trademark. This process of becoming customary is referred to as ‘inburgering’. Besides registering it as a trademark, it is also possible that your slogan will have copyright protection.
If your slogan is ‘sufficiently original’ and has its ‘own character’, then you automatically obtain copyright. In practice, however, these criteria are not always easy to prove, which makes it difficult to rely on copyright. It is for the courts to examine in each case whether or not an appeal can be made to copyright.
Mimicking slogans
For a slogan that is neither trademark nor copyright protected, an appeal to slavish imitation could offer a solution. This is because the mimicking of the slogan, or even benefiting excessively from the popularity of an existing slogan, can count as an unlawful act against the person who previously used the slogan. Proceedings based on mimicry will, however, only succeed if the imitated slogan possesses a distinctive character, the use of the similar slogan leads to unnecessary confusion among the public and the threat of damage is likely.
Slogan search
Novagraaf can offer you a helping hand to find the right protection for your slogan. By means of slogan search you can find out whether identical or similar slogans are registered in both the (Benelux and EU) trademarks registers and in any register of catchphrases.
Learn more about slogans and catch-phrases?
To guarantee the unique character of a slogan both now and in the future, Novagraaf can investigate whether it is eligible for registration. Feel free to contact one of our consultants and let them tell you how we can be of further assistance. You can naturally also turn to us for related subjects such as trademark search, trademark watching and trademark infringement. We can be contacted by means of the contact form on the right top of the page. Don’t hesitate… Just do it!
