Interview: Charles Tiné, CEO, SafeBrands
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Q: How are the needs of start-ups different from those of well-established multinationals?
A: When you create a company, you can say, “OK, I’m going to get my .com, and I’m going to sell my new products there.” That’s fine, and if you export to Canada, you’ll have to set up a .ca domain name. But in five years, do you want to be independent, or do you want to be bought out? When companies are purchased, there’s often due diligence about the quality of the brand. If you haven’t been thinking about protecting their brand in advance, it’ll be much less valuable – there could be cybersquatters, for instance.
Large corporations are well-established and have had long-term strategies. The big brands we serve have all been attacked; they’ve all been the victims of cybersquatting. Start-ups, meanwhile, haven’t experienced this sort of harm. For them, the first stage of development is usually commercial and technical; they don’t pay enough attention to the legal side. Their attention is almost entirely on their products. They don’t automatically have the money to invest in protecting the brand, be it offline via the trademark itself or online via the domain name.
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