The UK’s Intellectual Property Office has approved Specsavers’ application to trademark the terms “should’ve” and “shouldve” to protect its well-known catchphrase.
The high street opticians made the application in July a bid to safeguard its slogan “should’ve gone to Specsavers”.
Third parties now have two months to raise any objections.
The catchphrase is central to the optician’s marketing campaigns, with adverts featuring people in embarrassing situations because they are unable see properly.
Tania Clark, a partner and trademark attorney at the intellectual property firm Withers & Rogers, said the decision to approve the application could open the door to similar moves by other companies.
“It is surprising the office has accepted this trademark for a single word, which is a verb in common usage. While such registrations are not impossible to obtain, it means that the retailer could soon have the right to exclude others from using ‘should’ve’ or ‘shouldve’ when communicating about certain classes of goods, including optician services, medical hearing aids and eyewear.
“We would expect more brand owners to try to obtain a registration for a single word used in their advertising or marketing campaigns in the future. After all, the ability to exclusively own the right to use a commonly-used word in your communications activity is an incredibly powerful marketing tool.”
Trademarking a single word is unusual, but not unprecedented. Carlsberg successfully registered the word “probably” in the UK after establishing the slogan “probably the best lager in the world”.
Specsavers has moved to protect its brand in the past, winning an appeal in 2014 that ended a long-running dispute with Asda. It prevented the supermarket from using a logo that the optician said was similar to its own.
