Australian corprate law

Regarding copyright in Australia, if you produced the material then you are automatically granted copyright. It is not a paid service like it is overseas, although there are a few out there that will try to convince you to hand over money so beware.

Trademark is pretty simple and I would recommend DIY, you don't need a lawyer the searches are free. Make sure you do your research first. i.e. don't get half way along the product development pipeline and then realise that your name is in breach or is too similar to anyone elses, costs you heaps of time and outlay. The gist of it is that is should not be able to be confused with someone elses product or branding. Make sure there is enough difference between the actual name and the logo. You can register both. You can always ring the ip lawyer and interview them for the job, in the process they will run a prelim search for you and give you advice if you are in doubt.

Jump onto ipaustralia dot gov dot au site and do all your searches before you choose your trademark name. To submit it costs $120 per class, then when it is approved another $250. Then there is a waiting period of 6 months for objections and then another fee, I think $250. Submit your registration online, takes about 1/2 hour. There is no real rush with the submission process so do all of your product development first, as long as you can prove that you had the name first it will hold up regardless of the trademark and the application process takes ages anyway.

Beware of IP laywers hunting you down when you submit, they will send you letters saying there has been an objection and you need to hire them to sort it out, they are just scammers.

Just a tip, if you are going to set up the company structure do this first, the trademark should be registered in the company name, not the business name.

Our Pty Ltd company was set up ages ago so I don't know the fee structure for that but to register a new business name was pretty cheap, a couple of hundred and to keep the company running it is another couple of hundred a year.

Another tip, if you think it is going to be big purchase the domain names for your company name, your name, and your product name and for the important ones purchase those as both dot com and dot com dot au.

Hope that helps

wow awesome reply. thanks

Lawyer costs for trademarking a name was $500.00 but, I found that out like 3 years ago so it may have changed.

To answer the incorporated questions its gone down significantly since 2006 when it about about 900+ depending on lawyers fees.

Now its about $400 or there about.. super cheap and can be worth it.

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Andrew