Samsung excites tech world with latest trademark filings.

Jonathan Paton

Jonathan founded The Trademark Helpline in 2008. He was running a web marketing business at the time and watched SME clients being pressured by larger organisations into surrendering their domains over trademark claims. Unable to find expert help within their budgets, he researched and defended the cases himself, then registered their trademarks. Uptake among his own clients was high enough that he handed the marketing business to his business partner and never went back. He came to it from financial services, having founded his first company in 2004 and sold it in 2007, and he still advises financial advisers and solicitors on corporate structuring, tax reliefs, succession and estate planning. At TMH his focus is making trademark protection affordable at every budget, across more than 4,000 UK filings. His view is that a trademark is not a cost and not insurance. It is an asset that can make a business money and save it money, and one that has to be watched and enforced to be worth anything. He compares it to a driving licence: having one is not the point if you never look where you are going, and there is no sense paying for one if you do not intend to drive. Jonathan is an ADHD CEO, diagnosed and medicated. He works fast and hyperfocuses, and says himself that he finds multitasking harder than most people do. What drives him is fairness, which he finds difficult to ignore when anyone is on the wrong end of it, himself included, and a dislike of waste. If he thinks you are missing a way to save or make money, he will tell you.