New Heraldic Seal for the AR

[J Duncan of Sketraw]

seal3-600.jpg (249.79 KiB) Viewed 13997 times

Seal rendition by Lubodrag Grujic

[Andrew Kerensky]

Now this seal would look very nice for embossing your certificates indeed but finding a company that could do it....

[Michael F. McCartney]

Can this also be trademarked?

[Martin Goldstraw]

The seal could probably be trademarked but my fellow director would have to convince me that by doing so we would be gaining something over and above what we already have. We are a Scottish company and as such our arms are already protected in Scotland. As to the UK as a whole, we already have the common law protection of "passing off" in that should anyone else attempt to use any of our "trademarks" (whether they be registered trademarks or unregistered trademarks) in an attempt to trade we could sue them. Passing Off is a common law tort which can be used to enforce unregistered trade mark rights. The tort of passing off protects the goodwill of a trader from a misrepresentation. The law of passing off is designed to prevent one trader from misrepresenting goods or services as being the goods and services of another, and also prevents a trader from holding out his or her goods or services as having some association or connection with another when this is not true.

The tort of Passing Off is of course only available in countries practicing Common Law. I am not familiar with the law in other countries and neither am I entirely sure how a UK trademark might be enforced elsewhere either (if at all). I am aware however that in the USA there is a recognition of Common Law rights; "Federal registration is not required to establish rights in a trademark. Common law rights arise from actual use of a mark and may allow the common law user to successfully challenge a registration or application".

We consider our seal to be one of our Trademarks, albeit an unregistered one.

[Michael F. McCartney]

Makes sense; I was more curious about the process and pro's and con's rather than pushing for TM