What is standard trademark validity?

Ghana’s music festival Afrochella is accused of trademark infringement in a lawsuit filed by organizers of Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This is not the first Goldenvoice, the company behind Coachella, have appeared in headlines for enforcing its trademarks, showing that music festivals are just as adamant about their intellectual property rights as any other brand.

Filing for trademark registration is something anybody can do with a single online application. Many business owners, however, decide to wait with trademark registration because the process can appear quite complicated at first sight. Applying without a legal representative can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Mistakes and errors are easy to make and can lead to weak trademark protection or the rejection of your trademark registration altogether.

Approximately 100 million new businesses are established each year [1]. The failure rate of startups is around 90% [2] and while there is a myriad of factors that influence startup success, we do believe that effective brand protection represents one of them. This article thereby presents a concise summary of 13 good reasons why startups should think about trademark registration from the very start.