So you’ve well and truly commenced your business journey, read about the benefits of registering a trademark, and have already registered a trademark for your business logo. Now the next step is to expand your business, which means looking for new opportunities to advertise your brand. You eventually realise that variations of your logo will need to be used in order to maximise your brand visibility. But, will using variations of your logo still ensure that your brand is being protected against misuse or worse, copied by another business?
What Are Logo Variations?
A logo variation is a modified or alternate version of your main logo (‘primary logo’). Logo variations include:
- Horizontal logo
- Vertical (‘Stacked’) logo
- Icon-only (‘Brandmark’)
- Text-only (‘Logotype’)
- One-colour (‘monotone’)
- Reversed
Some Examples
Text-only (Logotype)
Icon-only (Brandmark)
Why Are Logo Variations Important?
Logo variations are an important way to help grow your business. You will find yourself placing your logo on different promotional products and also social media platforms to increase brand awareness. Some of these places will also stipulate their own logo format requirements (think dimensions and file size limits). Therefore, having a family of logos will serve your business well in the long run.
Have exclusive rights to your brand and logo and safeguard your intellectual property
Examples of situations where you may need to use a variation of your logo are when:
- You have created a social media account for your business, such as on Instagram, which requires a logo suitable for square dimensions
- For business cards where a horizontal logo may look more appealing than using your primary logo
- Your sporting goods company decides to hand out free water bottles at a sports exhibition. You then decide that your brandmark would look best on the bottle
Is it necessary to trademark all logo variations?
The short answer is yes. If you trademark your primary logo, then only that one design is protected. If you plan to make any substantive changes to your primary logo or create variations of it, then you will have to file a new application for each design. It is in your best interest to register all the variations of your logo so that you can use it freely.
Conclusion
If you plan to commercially expand your business by placing your logo on different promotional products or using different social media platforms, then you should protect all the logos used by registering them. To help save your time and money with the trademark registration process, contact a trademark lawyer today.
