PROTECTING
WHAT YOU MADE.

In much of the world, including several major manufacturing markets, the person who registers a mark owns it regardless of who used it first. Brands routinely discover their own name already registered in a country they were about to enter, by somebody they have never met, entirely legally — and the options at that point are to buy it back, to fight it, or to sell under a different name in that market. Filing before you enter costs a fraction of any of them.

Four different rights covering four different things, and most brands need more than one of them. They are applied for separately, in each country you care about, and none of them covers what another one does — a registered trademark on your name protects nothing about how the product looks.

Sending a factory your patterns, specifications and artwork is handing over everything needed to make your product without you. An NDA is the floor. Ownership of tooling and molds, and what happens to them if the relationship ends, belongs in the agreement at the start.

Who owns the recipe, the pattern, the mold? What exclusivity was agreed? What happens at the end? These decide every future dispute, and the moment to settle them is when both parties still want the deal.