How do I protect my business name or logo?

These are three different things, and confusing them is the most common mistake we see. A business name registration under Ontario's Business Names Act is a public record that lets you legally operate under that name — registering it does not check whether the name conflicts with anyone else's trademark, and it gives you no exclusive right to stop another business from using a similar one. It also isn't permanent: an Ontario business name registration runs for five years and has to be renewed. A domain name only reserves an internet address, with none of the legal weight of either. Only a registered trademark, or established common-law use, gives an enforceable right to stop others using a confusing name for similar goods or services.

Under the federal Trademarks Act, a trademark is "used" once it appears on goods at the time they change hands, or is displayed or advertised in connection with a service — that's the starting point for building any claim to it, registered or not.

A registrable trademark has to be distinctive — capable of telling your goods or services apart from everyone else's. Names that are purely descriptive of the product ("Fast Pizza" for a pizza delivery service), or that are mainly a person's surname, or that are confusing with an existing registered trademark, are generally refused or vulnerable to challenge. Non-traditional marks — a distinctive sound, colour or shape — can also qualify in Canada, though they face closer scrutiny.

A trademark search before you commit to a name or logo checks the federal register and, ideally, business name and common-law use as well — it's far cheaper to find a conflict before you've printed signage and ordered packaging than after.

Registration is handled by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), a federal body — there is no separate Ontario trademark registry, so a single application covers the whole country. In outline: you file an application identifying the mark and the goods or services it covers (grouped by Nice Classification class), CIPO examines it against existing marks and the distinctiveness requirements, the application is published for opposition, and if no one successfully opposes it within the window the trademark is registered. Examination and opposition both take real time, so start well before a launch date — CIPO publishes current processing times, which move, so check them rather than assume.

Once registered, protection runs for an initial 10 years and renews for further 10-year periods indefinitely, provided the renewal fee is paid. Registration gives the owner the exclusive right to use the trademark across all of Canada for the registered goods and services — national from day one, unlike common-law rights, which only reach the area where the mark is actually known.

Registration is the start, not the end — a trademark has to actually be used to stay strong, and can be vulnerable to cancellation for non-use after a period of registration with no use shown. "Use" has a specific meaning under the Act: for goods, the mark has to be on the product or packaging at the moment it changes hands; for services, it has to be used or displayed in performing or advertising them — reserving the mark and never selling under it doesn't count. If you license the mark to a franchisee or distributor, keep control over how it's used and the quality it's associated with; licensing it out with no oversight can weaken your own rights.

If someone else starts using a confusingly similar name, a registered trademark gives you a direct infringement claim. Even without registration, Canadian common law recognizes a "passing off" claim where another business trades on your established reputation — a real but narrower and harder-to-prove right than registration gives you.

Registering the mark to yourself personally instead of the operating company, then selling the business without assigning it — a buyer inherits a business that doesn't actually own its own name. Letting the mark become the generic word people use for the product erodes the exclusive right that made it worth registering. And assuming a business name registration is "good enough" protection, then discovering a competitor with a federally registered mark, can force a rebrand years into building the business.