Personal trademarks distinguish us in a market saturated with cookie-cutter professionals. Nowadays, no one questions the importance of developing a personal brand in order to build a reputation and realize professional and business objectives.

Companies, communication experts, and marketing gurus… Today, everyone is talking about personal trademarks and the importance of building them. The internet is full of references to this concept, especially on platforms such as LinkedIn, where many professionals have decided to give free rein to their own brand.

But building a strong, consistent, and recognizable brand is no easy task

Finding something unique in ourselves, and starting to build on it is a good first step.  From there, you need to define a target audience and identify their needs and expectations; create a conceptual and visual identity, analyze the context and channels, and design a strategic action plan that allows you to reach your audience. 

To this point, it is more or less clear that the process is quite similar to the branding of any product, service, or corporate identity. But once I have trademarked a personal brand, can I protect it from infringement like I would with any other type of brand?

Registering a name and surname as a trademark

It is possible to register your name and surname as a trademark, as long as they meet a series of requirements, and you take into account a number of important factors. Firstly, the name must be your own. Although it might seem obvious, you cannot register another person’s name, with the exception of certain jurisdictions, and then, only with the express authorization and consent of that person or their heirs.

You should also check to see if your name matches the name of another person who is known to the general public. If this happens, the Patent and Trademark Office that receives your trademark application may automatically suspend it, even if the public figure or ‘famous’ person in question has not already registered it. Even if a trademark is ultimately granted in the above case, registering the name of a public figure may cause future complications with regards to maintaining ownership of the trademark.

Names similar to yours might also have been registered previously, or your name might form part of another protected trademark. All these other brands may try to prevent your brand from being accepted by filing an objection with the relevant office. In these cases, you will have a better chance of success if the first name and not the surname is the same, because surnames are considered more ‘distinctive’ and thus more prone to causing confusion among the public if they are the same.

Register a trademark using a nickname or initials

In the case of artistic or professional names that are nicknames or that consist of initials, a trademark may also be applied for. Initials can only be registered if they serve to identify the products/services in the market (as in the case of the CR7 brand of Real Madrid’s CRISTIANO RONALDO).

Similarly, a nickname will only be accepted as a trademark if the population at large associates it with the person it represents, or if the nickname is distinctive and meets the rest of the trademark requirements. Any signs that are contrary to the law, morality and public order, as well as any signs that are considered misleading, would be excluded here. And of course, brands that reproduce other previously protected signs are not admissible either.

If you think you meet the requirements we have laid out here, we encourage you to apply for registration of your personal brand. This would grant you the exclusive right to use your personal brand in the market of the country or countries in which you register it, maximizing all the personal branding efforts you have made to this point.