Taylor Swift has over 300 trademark filings. Why do most SMEs have none?

YOU have worked hard to build your small business, managing your cash flow, hiring well and nurturing trust among your valued customers. Now imagine waking up to bad online reviews from people who had a terrible experience with a copycat business.

Using the same name and a similar logo, the imposter stole some revenue and damaged your hard-earned reputation. If your business has a registered trademark for its key assets, you have a much stronger footing to take swift legal action against the copycat.

Securing a trademark is not just for global corporations – it is affordable and accessible for smaller companies, yet when Singapore’s Ministry of Law last put a figure on it in 2017, only 8 per cent of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) had registered intellectual property (IP) in some form.