So what should you do if you have a trademark registered in the name of your old company, and that company is maybe being dissolved, you forgot to renew it, or you sold your shares to somebody else, how can you get your trademark back? Unfortunately, you might not be able to get your trademark back, because it’s not your trademark, it’s the company’s trademark. Once a company is dissolved or de-registered, all of its assets actually go to the state, in Australia and in many other countries. So what happens is that, as soon as your company gets deregistered, the trademark becomes the property of the government.
Now there are ways that you can get around this, you can try and reinstate your company if it hasn’t been too long and there were good reasons for letting it lapse, or you could contact the bureaucrats about purchasing your trademark back. I have never had any luck with that, they are usually not up for selling back the assets to the shareholders or directors of a company, but it is an option. Another option is you could wait for the non-use period to complete.
So if the trademark has not been used for three years, you could file a non-use application and then refile for your trademark. The take home is that, if you are changing ownership of your business in any way, or deregistering your company, remember that it’s going to affect all of your assets, including your trademarks. So the best idea is to transfer that trademark to the ownership of somebody else, yourself, or some other company before you deregister your company. My name is Cathryn Warburton and I am the Legal Lioness.
