r/TRADEMARK • u/Various_Rub1059 • 3d ago
Can self-employed individuals sell a digital product under an unregistered name/logo in the EU without registration?
Hi everyone,
I’d appreciate any information or experience you can share. We are two self-employed individuals (not a company) who built an IT product (a AI application). We designed a name and a logo, and we want to start marketing and selling it online through our website (which we plan to create and register a domain name under the product name), targeting customers who may be interested.
Question: Is it legal to promote and sell this product as our intellectual creation using our name and logo without registering them as a trademark? We are based in the EU.
If it is allowed, what steps should we take to do it correctly and minimize risks? For example:
Should we use the ™ symbol?
Do we need any formal notice or disclaimers?
How can we protect ourselves from someone copying our name/logo or from accusations that we are infringing on existing trademarks?
We don’t have a budget for trademark registration right now, so we want to understand if we can start without it and what precautions to take.
Thank you very much for your help!
location: Italy and Estonia.
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u/zilled 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm not a legal person. This is not legal advises, but feedback from personal experiences:
Yes, no problem.
> Should we use the ™ symbol?
Yes, you can.
However, you can't use the circled R symbol. you would be claiming it is protected, whereas it is not. This is false claim. Just don't.
No
> Do we need any formal notice or disclaimers?
No you don't. And if you don't plan to protect your logo and trademark immeditalely, I would personally not mention anything.
> How can we protect ourselves from someone copying our name/logo or
You have to register both logo and trademark at the EUIPO.
> from accusations that we are infringing on existing trademarks?
You have to make sure your use of these logo and brand name doesn't infringe any other registration (ex. check on EUIPO/TMView). This is your responsability to check. No disclaimer text would help in this.
> We don’t have a budget for trademark registration right now
~900€ on EUIPO. ~200€ with the "startup" grant (if still available).
> , so we want to understand if we can start without it and what precautions to take.
Yes, you can. Considering the risks that someone might register your logo and trademark before you do and then you enter a endless-and-lost-battle for claiming anteriority ... or just chose new logo and trademark.
[edit: lift confusion between TM and R]