Siwela Wines Founder Siwela Masoga Shares The Mistake She Made When She Wanted To Trademark Her Business
Siwela Wines Founder Siwela Masoga Shares The Mistake She Made When She Wanted To Trademark Her Business. Siwela Wines Founder Siwela Masoga took to Twitter to share the mistake she made when she wanted to trademark her business. This mistake cost her R18 000, which could have been less had she done her research.
The post read, “Paying R18K on my trademark and learning later that I could have paid less by directly filling the application. Poor service that forever gets accompanied by endless invoices. Sometimes a little bit of research will save you a lot of money.” This shows that when people do not have enough information about what they are trying to do, they can get scammed as they are a lot of criminals who prey on unsuspecting individuals. By sharing this, Masoga is highlighting the importance of doing proper research before partaking in any activity that requires some sort of payment. By doing this entrepreneurs will be saving themselves from being scammed out of their hard earned money.
Trademarking a brand or company name is important because when a trade mark (brand name, slogan or logo) has been registered, nobody else can use this trade mark, or one that is confusingly similar, if this happens, legal action may result. This does not mean that one has to pay large amounts of money in order to have their brand name trademarked. In South Africa, the CIPC is responsible for facilitating the registration of a trademark and entrepreneurs should head to the organisation’s website in order to obtain the right information as to how to go about registering the trademark and what it will cost.
There are a lot of processes that entrepreneurs need to go through in order to secure their businesses, most of them lack information and therefore are scammed into paying large amounts of money where they shouldn’t. This is why it is important for them to do thorough research before committing to anything.
