Registering a trademark or timestamping: what's the difference?

Your company name, logo, a product name: should you register a trademark, timestamp, or both? These approaches meet different needs.

A trademark protects a sign, through registration

A trademark protects a sign (a name, a logo, a slogan) used to distinguish your products or services from those of your competitors. It is obtained by registration with the INPI for France, or the EUIPO for the European Union, for specific products and services.

It grants an exclusive right of use for ten years, renewable indefinitely. In principle, the first to file gets the trademark: having used a name before someone else is not always enough to oppose its registration.

Timestamping proves a creation

Timestamping grants no title and no monopoly. It proves that a file existed, in a precise state, at a given date. It is used to demonstrate the prior existence of a creation protected by copyright, which arises without registration.

The case of a logo

A logo is often both: a graphic creation protected by copyright if it is original, and a distinctive sign that can be protected by a trademark.

Dating the logo and its design stages proves who created it, and when. An earlier copyright may in particular make it possible to challenge a trademark registered by a third party that reproduces your creation.

And a name alone?

A simple name, without original graphic form, is generally not protected by copyright. To protect it as a commercial sign, trademark registration is what counts. Timestamping remains useful to document your first uses and exchanges.

In practice

Date your creations from the moment they are designed, then register as trademarks the signs you use commercially. The two work together: one proves the creation, the other protects the commercial use of the sign.

This article is for general information purposes and does not replace the advice of a legal professional.

To go further: the proof of trademark use case.