For years Nike built something that looked unbreakable: a brand recognized worldwide, iconic models and an enormous emotional connection with its customers. But while it kept betting on nostalgia and on designs that had already proven themselves, other brands moved differently.
Hoka and On Running did not just sell trainers. They bet on new geometries, cushioning technologies and technical developments that could become protectable assets.
That is the legal lesson, and it is broader than it looks.
A strong brand is not the whole of a company’s intellectual property
It is common for a business to register its name and logo and consider the job done. A trademark registration protects the sign that identifies you in the market: it stops a third party using an identical or confusingly similar mark for the same or similar goods.
What it does not protect is how what you sell works. That is a different branch of the system, with different instruments.
What each figure protects
- Trademark. The name, the logo, the slogan, even a colour or a sound where they are distinctive. Ten-year term from grant, renewable.
- Patent. An invention that is new, involves an inventive step and is industrially applicable. This is what would cover a genuinely novel cushioning technology.
- Utility model. Functional improvements that deliver a technical advantage without reaching the inventive level of a patent.
- Industrial design. The shape, the ornamental appearance, the particular geometry of a product.
- Trade secret. Technical or commercial information that has value because it is confidential, provided measures are taken to keep it that way.
Two manufacturers can arrive at a similar product by different technical routes and neither infringes the other. What they cannot do is reproduce the mechanism claimed in someone else’s patent.
Order matters
Patents and industrial designs require novelty. Disclosing the product before filing can destroy it, because what is already public is no longer new. An early launch campaign, a trade fair or even a social media post can cost you the right.
With trademarks the risk is different but just as real: the filing date determines priority against third parties, so whoever reaches IMPI first has the advantage.
What to check
- If your product has a distinctive technical or aesthetic feature, ask whether it calls for a patent, a utility model or an industrial design.
- Do not disclose that development before you file.
- Document as a trade secret whatever you do not intend to register, with confidentiality agreements.
- Keep the trademark current: declaration of use and renewals.
A strong brand opens doors. But if innovation stops, the market eventually looks elsewhere, and all that is left is a familiar name with nothing new behind it.
If you want to know which figure actually protects what your company develops, write to us: the first review is free of charge.