Check your trade mark position before expanding into overseas markets

Businesses often run into trouble here when they assume a New Zealand trade mark position will translate neatly overseas. A brand may already be in use elsewhere, the local risk profile may be different, or your planned distribution and marketing arrangements may create exposure that was not obvious at home. This review is intended to flag those issues before you commit to packaging, contracts, launch spend or distributor discussions. It Your lawyer will explain the practical position and your options in plain English. in another country.

The review usually considers your existing trade mark assets, the countries you are targeting, and the way your brand will actually be used in those markets. That can include how goods or services are sold, whether local partners or distributors will be involved, and whether there are related privacy, employment or contract issues that could affect rollout. For import and export businesses, those surrounding facts can matter as much as the mark itself. The factual context and working arrangements often shape which risks are commercially important and which next steps are sensible.

A filing service is generally about lodging an application, while a basic search tends to answer a narrower availability question. This review is broader than that, but still centred on the review itself rather than ongoing international filing management. It looks at the legal and commercial setting around your expansion plans, including whether there are obvious pressure points in contracts, data handling or staffing arrangements that could affect brand rollout. If you later decide to pursue filings or need local counsel in a particular country, that would usually be a separate step.

Usually not very well. A generic checklist may prompt useful questions, but it will not reflect the countries you are entering, the way your products move through the supply chain, or the commercial structure behind your expansion. For example, the risk profile can differ depending on whether you are licensing the brand, appointing a distributor, selling direct online or using local staff or contractors. The right drafting and advice depend on the documents in play and on how your business actually operates, not just on a list of standard trade mark issues.

No. The fixed-fee is for the review work described on this page and the written recommendations that follow from it. It does not include filing or prosecuting overseas trade mark applications, representing you in disputes, handling technical implementation, managing security remediation, or acting on an ongoing basis after the review is delivered. Requirements can differ for Overseas Expansion Trade Mark Review depending on the authority involved, and any approval or registration outcome depends on the relevant authority and the facts in that market. If you need those next steps, we can discuss separate support.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Overseas Expansion Trade Mark Review service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.