What tradesmen want to protect their products? [Archives:2005/847/Business & Economy]

Mahyoub Al-Kamaly
Merchants and businessmen have stressed the importance of creating or selecting trademarks to distinguish the commercial work in the market. There are certain companies specialized in founding or establishment of trademarks consistent with needs in compatible with the type of the company. Consultants in the area of trademarks in the field of marketing believe that there are no fixed and final rules for defining the successful trademark. Nevertheless, there are some useful guiding principles. Among those principles are first to be ascertained that the proposed trademark would meet legal terms for the purpose of registering the trademark. The second thing is that the trademark should basically be distinguished in a shape and form enough to be expedient for protection and registration with the concerned parties and its distinction would help the consumer to differentiate it easily.

In remarks and statements to the Yemen Times, merchants said many consultants of trademarks in the world have set some essential criteria generally followed in the introduction of trademarks in their designing or selection. Among those criterias, as experts say, are to take into account that the trademark sign should be easy for reading, writing, pronouncing and learning in all wanted languages and should not indicate any negative meaning in the colloquial and foriegn languages. According to experts, the Yemeni market is in need of conducting a research on the trademarks to be ascertained that the concerned trademark is not able to be benefited by another company in the market or the targeted markets, and to be registered with offices concerned with trademarks in various countries without matching registration of existing trademarks or applications received beforehand. Research in trademarks could be done through referring to network data or the specialized companies or with national establishments for registration of trademarks. It could be easy to define the trademarks that are identical to a mark of a company but it is difficult to determine the trademark that is similar to another one in a way that could produce confusion. According to importance of a certain case, it is preferable to seek help of services of an agent or lawyer specialized in trademarks in order to conduct research in trademarks.

Specialists in this field think that forging trademarks would double the corruption of goods in the Yemeni market through bringing bad medicines via smuggling and falsification. Recently, many cases of forging trademarks have been disclosed and some of them have been seized in the Yemeni market and those responsible for them have been sent for investigation.
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