1 August 2025

Why an IP check-up is important

A check-up of your own IP situation (your own IP and that of third Parties) is crucial for all Speedboat Business.  As budgets are limited, you can not afford to hit a large container vessel with a strong IP portfolio!  A proper Check-up will save you lots of time and money!

One of these IP building blocks, is the name for your business, your product, your service:

As a mentor in several start-up initiatives, I am always struck by how lightly people approach the choice of a brand name. The reflex to check the domain name is often there, but the reflex to use simple databases such as TMVIEW is far too often lacking.

Watch out for translations!

• One of our customers wanted to determine a brand name for a new application.   Because the look and feel of the concept had to be Scandinavian, the customer sought inspiration in words from his own language that were distorted so that they sounded Scandinavian.  The customer quickly thought he had found the ideal brand name, until we threw the name into a translation app to check what the real meaning of the spoken version of this name could be.
  It turned out to have a completely wrong meaning, which would certainly not support the value of the product.

It never hurts to have the brand name choice translated into the countries where you want to be active, so that you know in advance whether it will be interpreted correctly in those countries. This certainly applies to creative names.

For our own activities, we decided to start from a Latin word that represented our activities for scaling companies. That led to the name Scalendi, which stands for ‘of scaling’ or ‘to scale’.  We checked several translations and of course checked for domain name availability and freedom to register as a trademark.

Unfortunately, at Scalendi, during our check-up exercises, we often encounter start-ups that have chosen a name that has already been registered as a brand name by a third party, even in their own NICE class (a system used to categorise goods and services for trademarks).  If you have built all your branding, your marketing material and your storyline around that name and then have to change it, that will hurt a lot of start-ups.

A check-up of a brand name really doesn't take much time and can save you a lot of headaches and money !