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Businesses sometimes tend to favour choosing descriptive or highly suggestive trademarks for their goods or services. A trademark which at least partly describes the goods or services may seem attractive as less efforts are needed to explain to the customers what is being offered to them.

However, one should be very cautious with making descriptive notions as part of their trademarks and investing financial resources in marketing such trademarks. It shall be remembered that descriptive elements are not afforded protection under the trademark law.

The underlying idea being that such elements shall be kept free for use by anyone who operates in the relevant business field. Thus, if your trademark includes a descriptive element, you should remember that your competitors will also be free to include such elements in their trademarks, trade names, domains and advertisements.

And on top of that, one more point of concern is the fact that you will usually not be the first and the only one having the idea of this descriptive or suggestive symbol or name for your trademark – many other businesses operating in the same field most probably have also considered choosing similar trademarks. Thus, there is a high risk that an identical or similar trademark has already been registered, which means that your trademark may be also opposed and in the end lack protection at all.