One of my team recently flagged something to a local business, a genuinely successful brand, that they were trading with no trademark at all. There was no hard sell. He simply explained the risk and said we would call back in a week. By the time we did, they had “sorted it themselves” with AI, and that is where this story gets useful, because they had quietly walked into one of the most common and most expensive mistakes I see.
They had filed a combination mark, the name and the logo locked together as a single trademark, because on the face of it that looks like two protections for the price of one. It is not. When you have a distinctive name and distinctive branding, you generally need each protected in its own right, because a combined mark only protects the two elements together, not separately. They had paid to cut a corner that never needed cutting, and they did it with complete confidence, which is exactly the problem.
Where I land on AI and trademarks
Here is roughly where I have settled on all of this. AI is a brilliant assistant and a poor researcher, and for a trademark that distinction is everything. It can give you a confident, fluent, completely wrong answer if your prompt is not clear about what you actually need to protect, and how could your prompt be clear if you do not yet fully understand that yourself? The confidence is the trap. It rarely sounds unsure, even when it should.
The real danger is in the research
The bigger risk sits in the research rather than the drafting. AI will happily tell you who owns a name, but there is no verifiable source of truth behind that answer, and a miss there is the most expensive kind of wrong, because you only tend to find out after you have filed and paid. Proper clearance is not a quick availability check to see whether a name is “taken”. It is a careful look at what is already in use, and whether it is close enough to cause you a problem, across the official registers in every country you trade in, as well as domains, social media handles, online marketplaces and Companies House. One objection from an examiner or an earlier rights holder is all it takes for an application to be refused, and when that happens your official fees are simply gone.
This is why we look before we file rather than after a rejection. A proper trademark clearance audit and consultation is designed to catch the distinctiveness problems, the wrong filing types and the conflicting earlier marks before they cost you anything, and if you just want a quick first look, our free trademark search is a sensible place to start.
Where AI genuinely earns its place
None of this is me being anti technology. AI absolutely has a role to play once the strategy is agreed. It is useful as a second pair of eyes, for talking an idea through, and for tidying up the grammar of those of us who type in a hurry. The mistake is asking it to make the judgement calls that decide whether your application stands or falls, because those calls depend on experience and on verifiable information that it simply does not have.
So by all means use the tools. Just remember that the most expensive applications are the ones that fail, and that a brilliant assistant is not the same thing as a reliable researcher. For the part that actually protects your brand, it still pays to have a human who does this every day check the things a confident chatbot will happily get wrong.
Questions about this
Is it safe to rely on AI to check whether a trademark is available?
Not on its own. AI will happily say who owns a name, but there is no verifiable source of truth behind the answer, and a miss usually only comes to light after you have filed and paid. Proper clearance looks at what is already in use and whether it is close enough to cause a problem, across official registers in each country you trade in, as well as domains, social media, marketplaces and Companies House.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEOWhat is a combination trademark and why can it be a mistake?
A combination mark locks a name and a logo together as a single trademark. It can look like two protections for the price of one, but it only protects the two elements together, not separately. Where a business has both a distinctive name and distinctive branding, each generally needs protecting in its own right. Filing a combination mark to save money can leave the name or the logo exposed on its own.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEOHow can AI help with trademarks without creating risk?
AI is a useful assistant once the strategy is agreed. It works well as a second pair of eyes, for talking an idea through and for tidying up grammar. The risk comes from asking it to make the judgement calls that decide whether an application stands or falls, because those depend on experience and verifiable information. The most expensive applications are the ones that fail, so it helps to have a specialist check the research.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEO
