Why artists should register their trademark by Levina

Thanks to artist Levina aka Isabella Levina Lueen for sharing this article with us and our community. In this piece Levina looks into the importance of trademarks for artists. Levina is an independent singer - songwriter who continues to enchant listeners with her contagious musicality and enthralling emotion. Born in Germany, the London-based artist continues to carve out her own realm of alternative pop inspired by the soul.

Why artists should register their trademark?

What is a trademark?

Most of us will have heard of trademarks. Big companies like Nike and Apple have one, for example. We know their names, we know their logos and we know what they sell. So if a clothing company were to call themselves Nike now, we would understand why this would infringe some sort of copyright, as the original Nike have already built a huge brand with that same name. To put it simply a trademark is  “a word, phrase, symbol or design that identifies your goods and services and distinguishes your brand from competitors”, as described by Forbes.

Although it’s common practice to register a trademark when you start a business, it’s not as common amongst independent artists. It doesn’t even seem to be talked about that much in the music industry, apart from the odd scandal here and there. And even if you know about it, there’s another reason why registering a trademark isn’t the first thing on the to-do list of an independent artist: it’s expensive.

As independent artists we have many expenses: Recording, production, mixing, mastering, equipment, session musicians, artwork, photoshoots, music videos, merchandise, PR and online marketing, are only a few of them. It often takes a while before artists see a return of investment and, let’s be honest, artists who are just starting out, are probably not earning anything from their music. So until you’ve reached a certain level of success, it might seem like a silly idea to spend hundreds, potentially thousands, of pounds, on registering a trademark. However, today I’m here to tell you why registering a trademark is, indeed, an important investment, if you are serious about your music career, even if you’re just starting out.

What can happen if you don’t register your trademark 

A few months ago I received an email from my distributor, saying that my music had been removed from all digital streaming services (DSPs), because someone had registered the trademark to my then artist name IZZA and had reported my profile. Any artist reading this can probably imagine how devastating an email like this is. All the hard work put into making music and going through several marketing campaigns in the last two years, suddenly felt pointless. I felt like I had no control over my music at all. I felt powerless in this big music industry machine. I was at the mercy of another person, a fellow independent artist, who didn’t even send an email beforehand, but just deleted me and my music from the online world.

After getting over the initial shock phase of this email, I started the problem solving. If there’s one thing I learnt about the music industry, it’s that you have to pick yourself up again and again and get on with it, because no-one else is going to do it for you. I spoke to several lawyers about the situation. It turns out that the first person to register the trademark in any country in the relevant category has the global priority. Other people don’t really have a chance of a successful counterclaim, unless they are already publicly known by that name, basically famous. Due to the fact that the other artist and I had similar streaming numbers and press coverage as well as the cost and time involved in submitting a counter claim without any guarantees, I decided not to do it.

The best option was to change my name. Luckily I had released music under a different name, my middle name Levina, before. I was signed to a major label and had quite bit of success, but not a lot of creative control. Changing my name to IZZA and reinventing myself was a way to take back that control and experiment, to figure out what kind of artist I really wanted to be. I always thought that someday I might release some more music underway previous artist name, but I would have loved for that to be on my own terms and my own timeline. However, I decided to turn a bad situation into a good one, and go back to Levina, embracing the journey of the artist I was and the artist I am now. Turning setbacks into positives and learning from them is something we as artists, and people, have to do a lot, and the trademark issue was just another one of those.

The challenge was to move all my IZZA releases over to the Levina channels, including songs, music videos and live videos, and change my name on my website and on all social media, which is annoyingly hard when you are verified. Let’s just say, it wasn’t straight forward at all. Luckily, I had just signed a distribution deal with Absolute Label Services, who supported me throughout the whole process and managed to get my music back online in September, almost four months after it was taken down. Thinking about how much work it was and how many logistics were involved (think hours of going through metadata, PRS, PPL registrations), I can’t imagine how long this would have taken for an independent artist without any support.

I tried not to think about the lost money that I had spent on artwork, PR and FB ads all linking to my ‘old’ accounts as well as merchandise with the wrong name on it. As you can imagine it was quite a substantial amount. I also had to rebuild the brand online, because my features in Billboard, Wonderland, and Earmilk with the wrong name were pretty useless to my new Levina artist profile, great! So yes, registering a trademark might be pricey, but losing the money you invested in your artist name, can turn out to be much more expensive.

How to register a trademark

Having had this experience I obviously didn’t want to risk this ever happening again. So I looked into registering the trademark for Levina. As music and streaming is a pretty global affair it would make sense to register the trademark in the whole world, but that would be very expensive. And, as I mentioned earlier, if you are the first one to register the trademark in your country and in your class, you actually have global priority, unless someone else objects.

In the UK you can register a trademark yourself through the government website here.

As I wanted to be extra safe and cover more territories, I’ve teamed up with some amazing trademark lawyers at HGF. If you wanted to go this way, I’d suggest to do your research, speak to a few different lawyers and find the ones that feel right for you. I decided to register the trademark in my main target markets the EU, the UK (yes you have to register a separate trademark, which costs more, thanks to Brexit!), and the US. You can register trademarks in different classes, so that businesses in different industries can potentially have the same name without negatively impacting each other. For example, someone could register a trademark for a dry cleaners, called Levina, and I could register my artist name Levina, and we could happily co-exist, as we are easily distinguishable.

As an artist it makes sense to register your trademark in four classes:

Class 9 - Sound recordings; video recordings; downloadable recordings etc

Class 16 - Printed matter; posters; calendars; books

Class 25 - Clothing; footwear; headgear

Class 41 - Entertainment services; musical entertainment services; concerts; TV entertainment etc

Classes 9 and 41 are the most important, as they essentially cover your recorded music and live music performance. Classes 16 and 25 are important once you start selling a lot of merchandise, like T-Shirts and posters etc. You can of course still sell those, just remember that they will not officially be protected under trademark law. I decided to register Class 9 and 41 for now, and add the other two classes in the future.

The Moral Of The Story

When I told my friends, who are also artists, about what had happened to me, I was surprised  to find out how many of them didn’t know about the importance of trademarks and hadn’t registered their names. I’ve now made it my mission to tell everyone I know about it haha and a few of my friends have registered since. Of course, the chances of something happening to you, the way it did to me, are very slim. But it can happen to anyone and I’ve got to tell you, it’s not a fun experience seeing all your work disappearing into thin air. So everyone who hasn’t registered their trademark yet, do it!

This experience has also demonstrated that the legalities around the trademark issue in the streaming age need to be updated. It’s understandable that DSPs don’t want to get involved in any legal disputes on their platforms, but the fact that they have the power to remove someone’s music with one click and without any warning is not right. Artists whose profiles are being reported and whose music is about to be taken down, should receive one or two weeks notice. Like that artists would at least be able to prepare, choose a new name (or resolve whatever else the issue might be), warn their listeners, and set up a new temporary infrastructure for people to listen to their music. Like that artists could try and make necessary adjustments quickly and avoid missing out on streams, due to their music being down for four months, as it happened with me.

Imagine thirty years ago at the high time of CDs, customers wouldn’t have been forced to return the CD’s they already bought, if the artist was involved in legal dispute or had a name change. Instead, the production of those CDs would have stopped or the name on the product would have changed from that moment onwards. If the DSPs remove songs, the consumer also loses their access to the song without any warning. The fact that the artist has no control what so ever about what happens to their music on DSPs is wrong. Something needs to change and I am here to open up this conversation.

If you have any other questions regarding trademarks, feel free to get in touch with me via email or on all social media channels @levinamusic.

And if you’d like to listen to my music, you can do so here.
Thanks for reading :)
Isabella Levina Lueen