Register a trade mark for a photographer

A photographer's name or logo can be protected separately

A photographer can have the business name or logo under which they operate registered as a trademark, independently of the registration with the Chamber of Commerce. That Chamber of Commerce registration establishes that a business exists, but says nothing about who is entitled to use the name. Working as a photographer under a particular name — on the website, on invoices, on a logo at the studio — does not in itself create an exclusive right to that name. A fellow photographer, or anyone else, can have that same name registered as a trademark and subsequently demand that you stop using it.

For a photographer, this usually involves a word mark (the name) and sometimes a figurative mark (the logo), filed with the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property for the Benelux or with the European Union Intellectual Property Office for the entire European Union. The application must also include a choice from the Nice Classification: photography services, printed matter or photo albums, and any equipment or software each fall into their own category, and protection applies only to the goods and services that are specified. A trademark for photography services therefore does not automatically protect a photo book line or a course offering unless these have been included — this is precisely why the class selection at the time of application matters.

What this is based on: the Nice Classification and the registers of the Benelux Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office

That trademark protection works per goods and services category follows from the Nice Classification of the WIPO, which is used by both the Benelux Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office when examining applications. That a trademark is geographically limited — Benelux via the Benelux Office, the entire EU via the European Union Intellectual Property Office — follows from the way both offices have set up their registers and application procedures. What a trademark exactly covers thus depends on two choices at the time of application: the territory and the classes, and these can be found in the official registers of the Benelux Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office themselves.