Trade mark use
A few important principles apply to maintaining your registered right. First, you must use the trade mark, and it must be used properly.
The notion of ‘use it or lose it’ applies to a trade mark. A certain provision in the Trade Marks Act stipulates that, if you do not use your trade mark for a continuous period of five years, it can be cancelled. So, if someone is interested in the mark, and you have not used it, that person can have your registration cancelled on the basis of non-use.
The use must be in relation to the goods or services that are covered in the specification. It is no good selling thousands of sunglasses branded with the trade mark if your registration covers cameras. Even use on promotional items will not be taken into account if you have not used the trade mark on the specified goods.
Next, your brand name may become generic if you do not use the brand properly — particularly if the product is an innovation. This is what happened to words like elevator, hoover, windsurfer, linoleum — they were once brand names, but were used generically and lost their trade mark value.
Let’s imagine you invent an erasable pen. We now know that you should not brand it something like ERASAPEN. Rather choose a fanciful word like GOXXA. Then, use the mark properly. Do not say (or write) ‘I invented Goxxas.’ Do state ‘I invented GOXXA® erasable pens’.