About Shireen Smith
Shireen Smith is a lawyer and founder of Azrights, a brand and IP consultancy. She has written two books Legally Branded and Intellectual Property Revolution, and her third will be out in 2020.
Shireen Smith Description
Every small business owner needs access to the legal insights available to the world's top brands. With the benefit of legal and branding advice from expert professionals, household names have every advantage when positioning their brands for success. Filling a gap in the market for books that cover legal aspects of branding in an accessible way, Legally Branded alerts you to the crucial issues larger businesses understand when launching products and services. Even if you consider your business too small to be a brand, many aspects of brand law are universally relevant.
The book offers practical, realistic guidance to help you build your business on solid foundations. Whether selling products or services, your chances of sustained success are greater if you follow brand law principles, like choosing names with trade marks in mind. Names present a common trap for the unwary. The book discusses the law in depth by advising a fictional business, deliberately choosing one not in the creative or other sectors traditionally associated with Intellectual Property and branding.
Nowadays all businesses have IP, due to the knowledge economy, globalisation, and countless other developments. This book helps you avoid mistakes which might otherwise lead you to infringe the rights of others, or use to names which are inadequate to serve your wider ambitions. Principles of visual branding are explained, as are copyright, reputation management, brand protection, licensing, legal protection of ideas, and protection against unfair competition and theft of market share. I also cover the interactions between domain names and search engine optimisation. These are important to understand when choosing names, and before commissioning a website.
Armed with this information entrepreneurs and small business owners will be better equipped to understand their risks and opportunities, and set their businesses up with maximum chances for sustained success.