As intellectual property attorneys at the Yau Law Firm, clients often inquire about the benefits of having a trademark. What is a trademark, and what can it do for businesses? The answer: plenty. What better way to demonstrate the power of having a trademark than to play a simple video game app?

It’s called Guess Food (for the Android version, click here: Guess Food,) an easily addicting game that tests your knowledge of common food brands like Gatorade, Heinz, or Starbucks. The goal of the game is, as you may have assumed from the name, to guess the brand of the product with the letters provided. Players are to guess solely on the appearance of the packaging and the trademark logos. If you get stuck, you get a couple of useful tools like letter deletions, skips, and letter placements.

While playing it, I thought that it would be the perfect tool to explain the power of trademarking. I went through the game pretty fast; I got stuck on a few items, but the rest were pretty easy. Then it dawned on me: I went through the game quickly because the brands were just that easily recognizable. These were brands I saw every day, and I could identify the product easily by simply looking at the packaging and the logo.

This is the power of trademarking: it is a word, a symbol, a picture, even a slogan or a packaging that can get an everyday consumer to easily identify the product. The idea that registering a trademark is only applicable to extremely successful businesses is false! I am certain that most of the brands you will encounter in Guess Food started off small and grew to be a giant in the market.

To find out how your company’s brand can become a valuable business asset through trademarking, give us a call today!

P.S.

The above picture is a screenshot from my own iPad. Do you know what that brand is? Think you can beat my score? 🙂 Give it a try!

Article by: Florence Chen Monauer

Filed under: Trademarks by Yau Jo-Anne Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013