Not Your Name Yet

Your business has a name. Legally, it isn't yours yet.

Until a name is registered as a trademark, it belongs to whoever files for it first. Every year, thousands of founders discover this the hard way - a rival's lawyer's letter, a blocked export market, a rebrand nobody budgeted for.

Kjell H. Landsverk has spent his career on the other side of that discovery. As the founder of Trademack, the London firm behind thousands of trademark registrations, he kept meeting the same person: a smart, capable business owner who had never had trademarks explained in a form worth reading.

This book is that explanation. One term per page. One line you'll remember, then a plain-English gloss you'll understand. No legalese, no filler - just the 170 ideas that decide whether you keep your name:

• Why the strongest trademarks describe nothing - and descriptive names are a trap
• The five-year clock that quietly kills unused registrations
• Genericide: how escalator, thermos and aspirin died of their own success
• Trademark squatting - why someone in China may already own your name
• The scam invoices that arrive weeks after every filing
• What ®, ™ and ℠ actually mean - and when using ® is an offence