October 26, 2011



Suzanne Antal is a Registered Trade-mark Agent in Fasken Martineau's Montréal Intellectual Property Group. She handles all aspects of trade-mark prosecution in Canada.

Excerpt

Hundreds of years ago, in medieval Europe, manufacturers produced original goods with visible, distinctive attributes, which pertained to their craft. This technique allowed their consumers to identify an original product and discouraged counterfeiters due to greater costs induced by said attributes. Today, entrepreneurs can rely on a primary intellectual property law called Canadian Trade-mark Act to reach the same objective, at an arguably lesser headache.

As explained by Suzanne Antal, neglecting this aspect of a startup's legal ecosystem can have costly repercussions: "If poorly managed, valuable trade-mark protection could be irretrievably lost, the consequences of which could be dilution of your product or service identity in the marketplace; reduced legal recourse against copycats; and loss of a monetizable asset."