Trade marks on the move as branding goes multimedia

FOR more than 140 years, businesses, brands and even rock bands have put pen to paper in the hope of creating a distinctive trade mark that captures the public’s imagination.

Since then, millions of companies from around the world have claimed exclusive rights to unique 2D logos, words and specific shades of colour to help promote their activities.

But this year, the Intellectual Property Office, the government body that oversees trade marks, has embraced the digital age by accepting moving multimedia designs, holograms and sounds.

A series of “motion marks” have been lodged as companies rush to claim the rights to digital film clips that are more likely to be seen on the internet and social media than as traditional labels and signs.

The first pictorial trade marks, registered in the 1870s, were for British and Irish beers – but a Japanese multinational technology firm has protected the first “multimedia motion mark”.

A one-second clip of the Toshiba logo surrounded by origami-style folding coloured triangles has made legal history after new laws were introduced to allow marks to be submitted through multimedia.

The American internet giant Google was the first company to register a hologram, featuring the letter “G”.

Tim Moss, chief executive of the Intellectual Property Office, said: “Trade marks are likely to become increasingly innovative in the digital age as organisations explore imaginative ways of reflecting their distinctive brand personalities using creative intellectual property.”

A spokesman for Toshiba said the company was delighted to be the first to register a motion mark, adding that its moving image was more than “just a refreshed logo”.

British businesses, including a property developer and dairy food firm, have also registered motion marks.

The first trade mark ever registered was the distinctive red triangle and lettering of Bass’s pale ale beer bottle, which became protected in 1876.

Six years later, the label appeared in Edouard Manet’s painting, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, and is still a valid trade