If your mother approached you and asked, "Would you like a Dove bar to eat?”, would you be delighted or disgusted? Depending upon which product brand you are thinking of when you hear Dove, you may have great thoughts of eating chocolate or nasty thoughts of putting a bar of soap in your mouth.

Dove is a brand for two products, each owned by separate corporations and it is trademarked in both cases. How can this be? I thought that trademarks were exclusive. Trademarks are exclusive to a specific trademark class. Dove the chocolate bar belongs to a class that includes confections and Dove the soap belongs in a class that includes cleaning materials, cosmetics and perfume. However, there could be a lot more Dove brands out there because there are 45 international product and service trademark classes! So I could create Dove motor oil, Dove metal refinery, Dove telecommunications, and Dove guitars; each which could be legally trademarked so it was protected while not infringing upon the other Dove brands.

Beyond the legal protection of your brand name, let’s talk about the confusion that happens when people in the marketplace hear the same brand used for multiple products and services. Does it dilute the brand? It might. From a marketing perspective, your brand needs to be unique to you, regardless of the trademark class you find yourself in. At the sound of the word that describes your business, products or services should be a connection with your customers that does not confuse them in any way. If you share your brand name with another product or service, you run the risk of watering down this impact. But more than that, you could become the subordinate of the two brands.

You may have heard of the nearly 30 year battle between Apple Corps (the parent company of Apple Records famously established in 1968 by the band, the Beatles) and Apple Computers, formed in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Apple Corps complained that Apple Computers was diluting their brand by using the same name for their computers. The music company sued the computer company in 1978. They came to an out-of-court settlement in which Apple Corps agreed to stay out of computer sales and Apple Computers agreed to stay out of the music business - except it didn’t. When i-Tunes came about in 2003, the two sides went at it again. The case was settled by a judge in 2006 who found in favor of Apple Computers, claiming that distributing digital downloads of music was not the same as distributing vinyl records and CDs. Let’s fast forward 15 years to today. What do people think about when they hear the brand name, Apple? Are they thinking about the Beatles music or are they thinking about a multi-faceted technology and communications brand? When the trademark infringement lawsuit began in 1978, who would have thought that the brand name, Apple, would be recognized with every part of the way you communicate and the record company would be a relic of the past? The junior brand overtook the senior.

A strong brand will help you make a connection with your customers. Create a brand that is exclusively yours and then guard your brand against this kind of dilution. Intellectual property laws will only protect your brand so far. You have to do the rest. Here is where marketing has to do its job. Get your brand in front of people. Promote it. If your brand is the best kept secret in your industry, your marketing is failing. This goes beyond just putting your logo on everything (although that is important.) Branding is helping people understand what the logo represents - the best features of your products, the solution to their problem, the quality of your service, etc. If you promote these characteristics, the recognition of your brand will increase. You must own this space in order to stay in first place in the mind’s of people who hear your brand name. Otherwise, your brand will be forgotten.

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Complete List of Trademark International Classes, thoughtstopaper.com

Apple Corps v. Apple Computers, 1978-2006, Intellectual Property in the Digital Age, University of Delaware, 4/21/2014