The Central Rationale for Trademark Protection Is and Ought to Be the Need of Businesses to Protect their Brand Value Rather than the Public Interest

Abstract

It has been misunderstood for years that trademark law was intended to protect the interests of consumers and improve the quality of information available at the marketplace. However, since the time of its inception, trademarks served the only purpose of indicating the commercial origin of services or goods at any given place (McKenna 2007). Public interest always played only a secondary role, even in traditional trademark law as can be seen from the numerous judgments where the courts denied relief though there was clear evidence that consumers were not likely to be deceived (McKenna 2007).With the functionality of innovation comes the reason to safeguard such innovation and this is the objective that drives business organizations to register their trademarks. In the following sections the importance of brand merchandise and the various reasons that drive businesses to protect their trademark is established and reviewed in detail. It is also established that businesses through centuries have always wanted to protect their brand image and with advancement in technology there has been no subversion of public interests, which always played a secondary role. This paper looks into the various aspects of trademark law that have been established over the years and asserts the importance of brand value protection that has turned into the core functionality of trademark law. Finally this paper concludes by establishing the various economic implications of trademark protection and how the current law is shaping through legislations and judgments around the world.