What can you trademark? It’s the question we’re asked more than any other, and the honest answer has three parts, not one.
There’s what the law will let you register. There’s what it won’t. And then there’s the part almost nobody talks about, which is what’s actually worth protecting for the business you’re running. Those are three different questions, and most people only ever get told about the first. If you already know what you want to protect, our UK trademark registration service takes it from there.
So here’s all three.
What can you trademark?
Your name. This is the one that matters most for the majority of businesses. A word mark protects the name itself, however it’s written, in whatever font, in whatever colour. It’s the broadest and usually the most useful form of protection you can hold.
Your logo. A figurative mark protects the visual design. Worth having, particularly where the design is distinctive in its own right, but it protects the artwork rather than the words in it. Our page on trademarking your logo explains the options.
A slogan or tagline. Possible, and people are often surprised by that. The bar is higher though. A tagline that simply describes what you do, or reads as ordinary advertising puff, will struggle. One that’s genuinely distinctive and works as a badge of origin can be registered. Our article on slogan trademarks goes into the detail.
A shape. Think of the Toblerone bar. Shapes can be registered, but the threshold is high, because a shape has to depart significantly from what’s normal in that market before people will read it as a brand rather than as a product.
A colour. Harder still, and rarely available to a new business. Colour marks usually need evidence that the public already associates that specific colour with you, built over years. Cadbury’s long fight over its purple is the cautionary tale.
A sound. A jingle, a start-up chime, an audio signature. Uncommon, but registrable.
Your own name, and in some contexts your likeness or voice. A personal name can be registered as a trademark, which matters enormously for founder-led brands, consultants and performers. Voice and likeness are newer territory, as Taylor Swift’s move to protect her voice shows.
How a product looks. Strictly that’s a registered design rather than a trademark, but it’s often the right answer for packaging and product shapes. Our design registration service covers it.
What can you not trademark?
This list saves people more money than the one above.
Anything purely descriptive. If the word simply describes what you sell, or a quality of it, you generally can’t have it to yourself. Nobody gets to own “fast delivery” for a courier firm. The register isn’t there to let one business take ordinary language out of circulation.
Generic terms. The actual name of the thing you’re selling.
Laudatory words. “Best”, “premium”, “number one”. Everybody wants to say them, which is precisely why nobody gets to own them.
Anything misleading. A mark suggesting a quality, origin or approval that isn’t real.
Anything already too close to somebody else’s. This is where most refusals actually come from, and it’s the one you can do something about before you file rather than after.
There’s an important exception worth knowing, because it’s rescued more brands than people realise. A descriptive name can sometimes be registered if you can prove the public has come to recognise it as yours through years of trading. It’s called acquired distinctiveness, it needs real evidence, and it’s a genuine route for an established business that picked a plain name years ago and built something with it.
What is worth protecting?
This is the part that isn’t really a legal question at all. It’s a commercial one, and it’s where we spend most of our time with clients.
Protect the thing that carries the recognition. For most businesses that’s the name. Logos get redesigned every few years; the name usually outlives three versions of the logo. If the budget only stretches to one, it’s almost always the name.
Be careful with combination marks. You’ll see these sold as two-for-one, the name and the logo registered together in a single application. They aren’t two-for-one. A combination mark protects the pairing as a whole, so if somebody takes just your name, or just your logo, you may find you’re holding a registration that doesn’t help you. It can also sail through examination precisely because the combination is more distinctive than either element alone, which is not the same as being more useful. Sometimes a combination mark is genuinely the right answer. It just isn’t a discount.
Cover what you actually sell, and where you’re heading. Protection is granted for specific categories of goods and services. Register for the wrong ones and you can end up holding something that doesn’t cover the part of the business you most need to defend. Our guide to trademark classes shows how the categories work.
Don’t try to protect everything at once. Most businesses don’t need to. Work out what you’d genuinely have to defend, protect that properly, and add to it as the business grows. It’s a process, not an event.
And be honest about what you’d actually enforce. A registration you’d never act on is worth less than a narrower one you would. That’s a budget conversation as much as a legal one, and it’s a reasonable thing to say out loud.
Where do people go wrong?
Usually in one of two ways, before they ever get to us.
They apply without checking properly, and the application fails on something a search would have found in an afternoon. The official fee is gone, the time is gone, and if somebody else has filed in the meantime the position is worse than when they started.
Or they build first and check later. Signage, packaging, a website, business cards, then a letter arrives. A forced rebrand is one of the most expensive things that can happen to a small business, and it nearly always traces back to a name that was never properly cleared.
Neither is careless. Both are just what happens when nobody tells you the order to do things in.
What do we suggest?
Start with a search. Ours is free, and it costs you nothing to find out whether the name is clear in the categories you actually trade in.
If it comes back clean, we’ll tell you. If it comes back with a problem, we’ll tell you that too, and sometimes the answer is not to file at all. We’d rather say that at the start than take a fee for an application we don’t think will succeed. A Trademark Clearance Audit and Consultation looks at the name, the logo and the wider market before you commit.
Run a free trademark search, book a free 15 minute call, email enquiries@thetrademarkhelpline.com or ring 0161 833 5400 and just ask.
Questions about this
What can I protect?
You may be able to protect the brand customers recognise, the look of a product and the creative or technical work behind it. The right route depends on what the asset is, who owns it and how the business uses it.
We believe most businesses benefit from looking at those assets together before choosing what to register. The business name is the obvious place to start with UK trademark registration, but a product name, logo, packaging design or piece of software can carry value of its own. They are not a cost: they are assets that can both make you money and save you money.
Here is the map:
- Trademarks protect signs that identify your goods or services: names, logos and slogans, and less usual signs such as shapes, colours and sounds. Those are harder to prove, as Cadbury’s purple battle shows.
- Registered designs protect how a product looks, not how it works.
- Copyright arises automatically in original artwork, writing, photographs and software code. It does not protect a business name or an idea, and paying a creator does not always transfer ownership.
- Patents may protect technical inventions and need specialist assessment before anything is made public.
- Contracts and confidentiality matter whenever creators, suppliers or partners are involved.
TMH identifies which assets suit trademark protection, including whether trademarking your logo deserves separate attention. Our design registration service covers product appearance. Patent matters are handled through our panel of regulated partners.
You get a practical map of what can be protected, the rights involved and the order to tackle them in.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEOWhat is a trademark?
A trademark is a sign that tells customers whose goods or services they are buying. It can be a name, logo, slogan or another distinctive sign, and registering it gives you legal rights in that mark for the goods, services and territory covered.
We believe the simplest way to understand it is to think about what your customers recognise. The company name on your invoice may not be the name on the product, the app or the shopfront, and the name doing the selling is often the one most worth protecting. UK trademark registration puts that protection on the record.
A trademark does not give you ownership of a word in every context. Its scope depends on the sign, the goods and services listed and the territory. A word registration and a logo registration protect different things, and ordinary descriptive wording is hard to register. Registering a company or buying a domain does not register the brand as a trademark. Some rights can come from trading alone, but a passing off claim depends on proving goodwill, misrepresentation and damage, which is slower and more costly than relying on a registration. A registered trademark is an asset: it can be licensed, sold and relied on against infringing use, and it is renewed every ten years.
TMH starts with the brand and the business behind it. A free trademark search gives a first look at UK word marks, and a trademark clearance audit shows what can realistically be protected. Once you are registered, trademark monitoring watches for conflicting filings.
You understand which parts of your brand deserve registered protection, and what that protection means.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEOWhat does a trademark protect?
A registered trademark protects the sign on the register for the goods or services and territory it covers. It lets you take action against infringing use, but it does not give you ownership of an idea, every similar word or a whole market.
We believe the question that matters is whether the registration matches the way you actually trade. A certificate can look reassuring while missing a key product, naming the wrong owner or showing an old logo, and those gaps usually come to light when you want to act against a copycat. UK trademark registration works best when it is built around the business you run and the one you are planning.
A word mark protects the words themselves, in any typeface. A logo registration protects the visual mark as a whole. Whether another brand infringes depends on how close the marks are, how close the goods or services are and whether customers are likely to be confused. A mark with a reputation can be protected more widely, but not against every use of the name. The wording of the goods and services matters more than the class number, and protection is territorial: a UK registration does not create rights in other countries. Product appearance, artwork and inventions may need different rights altogether. A registration does not physically stop copying either, or guarantee that a platform will remove a listing.
TMH checks whether your registrations fit the business through a trademark clearance audit, and trademark monitoring helps you spot possible conflicts early. Where regulated advice is needed to enforce rights, we coordinate help through our panel of regulated partners.
You know what your registration covers, and where further protection or a different response may be needed.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEOCan I trademark a sound, a jingle, or my personal likeness?
Sounds and jingles can be registered as trademarks if they identify your goods or services. A personal likeness is more complicated: a particular image can work as a trademark, but the UK has no general image right giving you ownership of every use of your face.
The useful starting point is the job the sound or image does. Does a customer hear it or see it and know who it comes from? A familiar tune, an ordinary noise or a photograph of the founder does not automatically pass that test. Taylor Swift’s filings to protect her voice are a good illustration of how far this is being pushed, and of the limits, as we explained in why Taylor Swift trademarking her voice matters to UK brand owners.
To register a trademark for a sound, the application needs a clear representation of the sound and the goods or services it covers. Copyright can separately protect the music or recording, and those rights need checking before you use or license it. With a face or likeness, protection is tied to the particular image and its commercial scope. It is not a ban on portraits, comment or unrelated images. A misleading endorsement may raise passing-off issues, and copyright, privacy and contracts can also matter. Appearing in a photograph does not make you its copyright owner, so commissioning agreements need to be clear about ownership and use.
TMH assesses the brand function and filing route through a trademark clearance audit. Where image misuse, copyright or another area needs regulated advice, we coordinate help through our panel of regulated partners.
You understand which brand assets can be registered and which other rights or agreements are needed around them.
Answered by Jonathan Paton, Founder & CEORelated questions
- Can I just copyright my business name instead?
- Can you trademark a descriptive name for your business?
- Trademarks, designs and patents: what’s the right solution for you?
- Is my business name too similar to one that already exists?
This page is for information purposes only and does not constitute trademark advice or guidance. Last reviewed 27 October 2026.
