The EU trademark system has a very unique and peculiar feature called “seniority”. In simple terms, seniority allows a trademark owner to “link” its earlier trademark registration to a later EU trademark.

You can use EU trademarks to protect your cannabis brand, but there are a couple of issues that you must pay particular attention to.

Sometimes when a company files a trademark, they decide that the mark for which protection is wanted is a little bit different than the mark that was identified in the application. Usually, the change is relatively minor, such as changing a singular form to plural form or vice-versa, or making a compound word from two distinct words or vice-versa. Even for these types of very minor changes, alteration is typically not possible.

If you have a physical product, it may be possible to protect the shape or exterior appearance with a registered design as well as a three-dimensional trademark. Both forms of protection have benefits and disadvantages.

Here’s how to build strong trademark protection for your brand. It all starts with a solid foundation.